BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) – Two young men have pleaded no contest to misdemeanor hazing in the drinking death of a Louisiana State University fraternity pledge whose blood alcohol level was more than six times the legal limit for driving.
The pleas of no contest Thursday means 22-year-old Sean-Paul Gott and 19-year-old Ryan Matthew Isto concede to the charge without admitting guilt.
Freshman Maxwell Gruver, of Roswell, Georgia, died in September 2017 after a night of drinking at the Phi Delta Theta fraternity house. A coroner said the cause was acute alcohol intoxication, with aspiration: He had inhaled vomit and other fluid into his lungs.
Twenty-year-old Matthew Alexander Naquin is charged with negligent homicide in Gruver’s death.
The Advocate reports that the plea from the two former LSU students can’t be used against them in civil proceedings.
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