Four frat members sentenced to jail in fatal hazing incident

Michael Deng (inset) and the rented house where the fatal hazing occurred.

FOUR MEMBERS of a nationwide Asian/American college fraternity were jailed for up to two years on Monday (Jan. 8) in the killing of a 19-year-old rushee during a hazing ritual. A Pennsylvania judge also banned the fraternity from the state for 10 years.

“This has proved to be the most troubling case to me in 19 years,” Judge Margherita Patti-Worthington said while issuing her decision. “Not one person out of 37 picked up a telephone and called an ambulance. I cannot wrap my head around it,”

Kenny Kwan, Charles Lai, Raymond Lam and Sheldon Wong pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter, hindering apprehension and other charges in connection with the death of Baruch College freshman Michael Chun Deng in 2013.

In addition, the judge ordered the fraternity to pay $110,000 in fines.

Deng was blindfolded, forced to wear a heavy backpack and then repeatedly tackled and punched while walking through a gauntlet as part of the fraternity’s initiation ceremony in a rented home in Pennsylvania’s Pocono Mountains in 2013.

Deng was knocked unconscious and later died at a hospital – but not before the boys attempted to cover up the crime while he lay dying, a grand jury later heard. They didn't call an ambulance because of the cost.

Kwan received 12-24 months in county jail. Lam and Wong were sentenced to 10-24 months each. Lai, who spent 342 days in jail after he was unable to make bail, was sentenced to time served.

RELATED: Asian American frat found guilty in hazing death

Last month, dozens of other fraternity members present at the hazing were given probation of varying lengths.

All four defendants showed remorse and apologized, some of them tearfully.

The judge and a prosecutor slammed Pi Delta Psi for calling itself a victim of rogue fraternity members, saying the fraternity tolerated and even encouraged hazing for years.

“It’s the epitome of a lack of acceptance of responsibility. It’s their rituals and functions that led us here today,” Monroe County Assistant District Attorney Kim Metzger said in court.
Patti-Worthington and a prosecutor slammed Pi Delta Psi for calling itself a victim of rogue fraternity members.

“It’s the epitome of a lack of acceptance of responsibility. It’s their rituals and functions that led us here today,” said Monroe County Assistant District Attorney Kim Metzger.

Pi Delta Psi has 25 chapters in 11 states, including one at Penn State University that will now have to be disbanded.
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Fraternity members plead guilty, sentenced to probation for hazing death

NBC

The property where the hazing death of Michael Deng (insert) occurred.

Fourteen former members of an Asian/American fraternity were sentenced to probation Wednesday, (Nov. 29) after pleading guilty to reduced charges in the hazing death of a young man pledging to Pi Delta Psi.

They joined the 15 other young men who plead guilty Tuesday (Nov. 28).

On Tuesday, 17 defendants appeared in Monroe County Court of Common Picas in Stroudsburg, Penn. Tuesday (Nov. 28) to accept responsibility in the tragic death of Chun "Michael" Deng, 19, who died while undergoing one of the fraternity's initiation ceremonies.

As the result of plea bargains, all 29 of them plead guilty to reduced charges and sentenced to  The harshest punishment was meted out to Andy Meng, brother of Rep. Grace Meng. As former president of the fraternity, he received a stiffer sentence of 36 months probation.

“You are better than this,” Judge Margherita Patti-Worthington told the group. "Be individuals and do the right thing going forward. Don’t get caught up in group think.”

Some of the members pleaded guilty to charges including concealing or tampering with evidence. Others admitted to simple assault and lying to police.

Most of the members were sentenced to between 12 and 18 months on probation except for Meng and another defendant. Ka-wing Yuen received 5 years probation, 100 hours of community service and a $100 fine.

The four Pi Delts who pleaded guilty in May to more serious charges will face sentencing next week. Punishment will likely include time behind bars.

Last week, the fraternity was convicted of charges including aggravated assault and involuntary manslaughter but acquitted of third-degree murder and voluntary manslaughter, both felonies.

In a ritual called the "glass ceiling" which was meant to teach the pledges of the bias they would face in society, Deng passed out after running the gauntlet of fraternity brothers who would hit, tackle or trip the pledges. The 2013 hazing of the New York's Baruch College students occurred at a rented  home in the Pocono Mountains, about 100 miles west of New York City.

During the incident, Deng was blindfolded, wore a 30-pound (14-kg) backpack and ran a gauntlet of fraternity members who tackled and knocked him down on the snow-covered ground in December 2013, police said.

The college students waited for more than an hour before driving him to a hospital, authorities said and that delay contributed to his death.

Rather than seeking help for Deng, who remained unconscious, the fraternity brothers reportedly Googled head injury symptoms and researched the cost of an ambulance before determining it would be too expensive. They allegedly called fraternity officers for advice on what to do.

Although deaths from fraternity hazings have occurred at several American colleges, prosecutors and defense lawyers said it was the first U.S. conviction of a fraternity for a death caused by hazing.

UPDATED Nov. 30 to include the second day of sentencing.

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Asian American frat found guilty in hazing death

PI DELTA PSI, an Asian/American fraternity, has been found guilty in the 2013 death of a student participating in the frat's hazing rituals.

The fraternity was convicted Tuesday of five felonies and two misdemeanors in the death of Chun Hsien "Michael" Deng who died in Pennsylvania's Pocono Mountains.

Chun 'Michael' Deng

The fraternity was acquitted of the two most serious charges, third-degree murder (involving a willful, wanton disregard for the potentially fatal consequences of one’s actions on someone else) and voluntary manslaughter (a heat-of-the-moment killing).

Deng, 19, who attended Baruch College in Manhattan, was pledging to Pi Delta Psi when he died during a December 2013 retreat at a rented house in the Poconos. 

Blindfolded and wearing a weighted backpack, Deng was forced to walk in the backyard in the early morning hours through a gauntlet of fraternity members who allegedly pushed, shoved, and tackled him in an attempt to bring him down, according to court records.

RELATED: Fraternity on trial for hazing death

Deng died from his injuries after fraternity brothers waited too long to contact authorities after the 18-year old  lost conciousness. It took a hour before the frat brothers brought him to a hospital. A forensic pathologist said the delaysignificantly contributed to his death, according to court documents.

Four frat brothers, Kenny Kwan, 28, Charles Lai, 26, Raymond Lam, 23, and Sheldon Wong, 24, have already pleaded guilty to charges of voluntary manslaughter as accomplices and hindering apprehension for concealing evidence, according to the Monroe County District Attorney's Office. The four men were originally charged with murder. Their sentencing is slated for December.

With a future sentencing date being scheduled for the fraternity, the prosecution plans to seek the maximum penalty of a fine and the fraternity being banned from any Pennsylvania college campuses.

The Asian/American fraternity was founded at the State University of New York’s Binghamton campus in 1994. Pi Delta Psi has 25 active chapters and five inactive colonies (aspiring chapters) on college campuses in 13 states including Pennsylvania.

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Fraternity hazing death: Asians are the loneliest Americans

"ASIANS are the loneliest Americans." The haunting line rings true for Asian/Americans trying to find a place to fit in in the American mosaic.

An article, "What a Fraternity Hazing Death Revealed About the Painful Search for an Asian-American Identity" by Jay Caspian Kang for the New York Times, is about the death by hazing of Chun Michael Deng, a college freshman struggling with identity and who was seeking membership in an Asian/American fraternity based in Baruch College, NY.

His quest for acceptance ended up in his death in 2013. He died from his injuries after fraternity brothers waited too long to contact authorities after the 18-year old  lost conciousness during a hazing ritual.

Kenny Kwan, 28, Charles Lai, 26, Raymond Lam, 23, and Sheldon Wong, 24, pleaded guilty to charges of voluntary manslaughter as accomplices and hindering apprehension for concealing evidence, according to the Monroe County District Attorney's Office. The four men were originally charged with murder.

Chun Michael Deng

More than 30 other fraternity members are awaiting court proceedings in connection with the death after a Monroe County, Pennsylvania, grand jury recommended charges. The fraternity, Pi Delta Psi, is also charged with murder, and is scheduled to begin trial this November, according to court documents.

In the New York Times, Kang writes:

Asians are the loneliest Americans. The collective political consciousness of the ’80s has been replaced by the quiet, unaddressed isolation that comes with knowing that you can be born in this country, excel in its schools and find a comfortable place in its economy and still feel no stake in the national conversation. The current vision of solidarity among Asian-­Americans is cartoonish and blurry and relegated to conversations at family picnics, in drunken exchanges over food that reminds everyone at the table of how their mom used to make it. Everything else is the confusion of never knowing what side to choose because choosing our own side has so rarely been an option. Asian pride is a laughable concept to most Americans. Racist incidents pass without prompting any real outcry, and claims of racism are quickly dismissed. A common past can be accessed only through dusty, dug-up things: the murder of Vincent Chin, Korematsu v. United States, the Bataan Death March and the illusion that we are going through all these things together. The Asian-­American fraternity is not much more than a clumsy step toward finding an identity in a country where there are no more reference points for how we should act, how we should think about ourselves. But in its honest confrontation with being Asian and its refusal to fall into familiar silence, it can also be seen as a statement of self-­worth. These young men, in their doomed way, were trying to amend the American dream that had brought their parents to this country with one caveat: "I will succeed, they say. But not without my brothers!'

Good stuff, right? For most of us, as we float between the worlds of black and white, trying to find out where we fit in, uncertain that we can fit in. Some of us take on the characteristics of African Americans, appropriating their slang, music and dance; others lean towards Latinos, learn some Spanish words, dance the salsa and wear their colors; still others, become bananas or coconuts, taking on the attributes, clothing styles and listen to the musical icons of the dominant culture. 

It's a long read, well written and contains some interesting insights. It's worth some of your time this weekend.

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