Danny Santulli is blindfolded, told to remove his shirt, and led to the basement of the frat house alongside his fellow freshmen.
There, his ‘pledge dad’, upperclassman Ryan Delanty, hands him a bottle of vodka, tapes it to his hand, and tells him to drink the entire liter. He’s also told to guzzle beer from a funnel.
Barely able to stand, Santulli collapses and is carried to a couch.
Santulli had been excited at the prospect of becoming a part of Greek life as an incoming freshman at the University of Missouri, joining the class of 2025.
He wanted to build lasting friendships in a special brotherhood, and had accepted an invitation to become part of the Phi Gamma Delta fraternity in 2021.
Alongside his course load, it was a demanding process. He dashed around at all hours to fulfill requests from members of the university’s local chapter: cleaning their rooms, picking up pizza and performing pledge tasks.
By October, the 19-year-old had nearly finished the grueling process but had one last event to attend: the ‘Pledge Dad Reveal,’ a hazing tradition where freshman pledges meet their ‘Big Brother’ and are pressured to drink copious amounts of alcohol.
Santulli’s new ‘brothers’ left him alone, suffering from acute alcohol poisoning, on the couch they carried him to. When he finally got medical care, he had already sustained significant brain damage.
Danny Santulli in 2020 before the hazing incident left him permanently disabled
Santulli, now 22, is blind, unable to talk and uses a wheelchair as a result of the brain damage he suffered after a night of hazing at the Phi Gamma Delta fraternity
Santulli was in the ICU for weeks. He survived, but is now blind, unable to walk or talk, and requires around-the-clock medical care.
Family attorney David Bianchi, dubbed ‘America’s leading hazing attorney,’ has represented dozens of victims and their families for the last 25 years in hazing cases at schools including Cornell University, University of Miami, and University of Utah.
He told the Daily Mail that Santulli’s case ‘is the worst fraternity hazing injury there has ever been.’
Phi Gamma Delta had reportedly received two separate violations from the university earlier that year related to alcohol and hazing.
‘The fraternity decided to move forward with this tradition that they did every year in the month of October regardless that they were on probation,’ he said, noting that hazing is prohibited at the college and by the fraternity’s national chapter, as well as being illegal in Missouri.
What made Santulli’s case particularly unusual, the attorney said, was that ‘every moment was captured on surveillance video.’
Bianchi provided the Daily Mail with a blow-by-blow account of the horror Santulli endured and the jarring negligence the lawyer said took place.
At the beginning of the night’s festivities, all the freshman pledges were called to the fraternity house with no prior knowledge of what would take place.
During the hazing ritual, they were told to remove their shirts, wear blindfolds, and walk single file to the basement with their arms on each other’s shoulders.
There, they met their ‘pledge dad,’ who handed them alcohol before they were paraded back upstairs.
‘You will see in the video some have the bottles taped to their hand so they can’t let go of it,’ Bianchi explained. ‘Danny’s bottle was taped to his hand.’
For the next two hours, they mingled like they were at a cocktail party and had to drink their way through the bottle, the attorney said.
‘You see one of the frat brothers holds Danny’s bottle up to the light and tells him to keep drinking,’ Bianchi said.
‘At one point we see Danny is standing around a hundred guys when he collapses and falls backwards. You see on the video they pick him up and bring him into a room in the fraternity house and dump him on a couch.
‘He lays there for a while and eventually slides off the couch face-first onto the floor. Someone comes along and puts him back on the couch.
‘Now he is lying there by himself at that point, he is in big trouble, but no one calls 911,’ Bianchi said.
Another person noticed Santulli hadn’t moved and wasn’t breathing. They decided not to call 911, but drive him to University Hospital instead.
Some of the frat brothers are seen carrying Santulli and dropping him on his head before scooping him up and putting him inside a car.
Bianchi explained that ‘by the time he gets [to the hospital] his heart stops, someone from the ER runs over and does CPR in the car, and the rest is history.’
He said Santulli’s blood alcohol content was a whopping 0.486 percent – six times the legal limit to drive in Missouri.
Five days before the incident, Santulli was on the phone with his sister, Meredith, a junior at the same college, the lawyer said.
The 19-year-old shared that he was sleep-deprived and stressed, telling Meredith that he ‘can’t do it anymore’ and that ‘they are making me perform all these errands,’ the attorney revealed.
Santulli, who was a finance major in the business school, was concerned that his studies were suffering.
His sister called their parents and they all spoke. They told Santulli he did not need to continue pledging and could walk away, the lawyer said.
But Santulli responded that he was going to ‘stick it out’ and ‘did not want to be known as a quitter.’
Danny Santulli and the other pledges are seen walking single file to the basement with their shirts off and blindfolds on
At the ‘Pledge Dad Reveal,’ freshman meet their ‘Big Brothera’ and are forced to drink copious amounts of alcohol .
Santulli is seen on the far left facedown on the floor. It is unclear how long he had been there before someone noticed. His fraternity brothers never called 911
The disturbing image of Santulli being carried out of the house with his feet in the air
The fraternity brothers are seen carrying Santulli to one of their cars before driving to the hospital
Bianchi named nearly two dozen defendants in a civil suit filed in early 2022, saying ‘there was so much fault to go around.’ They included Delanty, the fraternity’s national chapter, and 20 more individuals.
His goal was to get compensation for the lifetime of care that Santulli will require.
Though he did not disclose the exact amount the family received, he said it was a multi-million dollar settlement.
David Bianchi, dubbed ‘America’s leading hazing attorney,’ has represented dozens of victims and their families for the last 25 years in hazing cases at schools across the US
‘There is no financial limitation on their ability to provide for him because of the recovery that we made in the civil case,’ he said.
‘They will have whatever they need for the rest of his life without regard to cost.’
Almost immediately after the ordeal, the University of Missouri withdrew the Phi Gamma Delta fraternity’s recognition, and the national organization disbanded their chapter.
Eleven fraternity brothers were criminally charged in the case, 10 of whom were indicted by a grand jury for hazing, Fox4KRC reported.
In May 2024, Delanty, Santulli’s pledge dad, pleaded guilty and was sentenced to six months in jail and another six months under house arrest for hazing and supplying alcohol to a minor, Fox59 News reported.
Bianchi questioned why it took nearly three years for Delanty to be sentenced for the crime.
‘It made no sense because under the law, it was crystal clear that he was guilty,’ he said.
Ryan Delanty was Santulli’s ‘Pledge Dad’ at the Phi Gamma Delta fraternity. Pictured in court with his attorney, he was sentenced to six months in jail and six months of house arrest
With Bianchi’s help, the Santulli family is working diligently to pass Danny’s Law, which in part aims to make those who try to help victims of hazing immune from prosecution.
The proposed law is nearly identical to another pushed by Bianchi following the hazing death of Andrew Coffey in Florida.
‘Andrew Coffey and Danny Santulli were subjected to the exact same hazing incident many years apart and at two different universities, but the tradition that was being upheld was the same at both universities,’ Bianchi said.
Coffey was a freshman at Florida State University in 2017 when he died from acute alcohol poisoning after a night of hazing at the Pi Kappa Phi fraternity.
He had a blood alcohol content of 0.447 percent – more than five times the state’s legal driving limit, CNN reported.
Coffey was made to drink an entire bottle of Wild Turkey bourbon. His fraternity brothers put him on the couch, and when they came back the next day to see if he had ‘slept it off, he was dead,’ said Bianchi, who filed a civil suit on behalf of the Coffey family.
In that case, Bianchi filed a civil suit against the fraternity’s national chapter and 12 brothers, securing an undisclosed settlement for the family.
He also vowed that he would improve Florida’s current hazing law.
According to the existing law, he explained, the first person to call 911 after witnessing a hazing incident will be granted immunity from prosecution, even if they are the hazer. The immunity is lost if they do not provide their name or if they flee the scene before help arrives.
With Andrew’s Law, he said, ‘we expanded the immunity not just to the first person to call 911, but to anyone who was rendering aid to the victim while help is on the way.’
The law was passed unanimously and signed by Governor Ron DeSantis in 2019.
On Feb. 20, Danny’s Law passed the Missouri state Senate nearly unanimously.
Bianchi hopes it will get signed into law in April. ‘Our fingers are crossed. We still have to get through the House and the governor has to sign it,’ he said.
Danny Santulli was a freshman in the business school and planning to study finance like his older brother Nick, who also attended Missouri
Santulli pictured with his older siblings Meredith and Nick
Danny, now 22, is pictured with his family wearing ‘Danny Strong’ T-shirts named after one of their fundraisers
Santulli’s mother, Mary Pat Santulli, described the utter shock she felt upon learning that no one in the house called 911.
She said her son’s lips had turned blue and he was unresponsive when he was taken to the hospital only a few blocks away, where he went into cardiac arrest.
Doctors were able to resuscitate Santulli, but he had already suffered immense brain trauma and paralysis.
His family was grateful he was alive, but wanted those responsible to be held accountable. When Mary Pat learned that no one would be going to jail, she and the family decided to fight.
‘We put together a petition and got thousands of signatures, and they finally did press charges,’ she told the Daily Mail.
She said she ‘really wanted’ pledge dad Delanty to be charged with a felony, but he ultimately pleaded guilty misdemeanor.
One of the most difficult things about the ordeal, Mary Pat shared, was that ‘no one ever apologized.’
Before the full extent of Santulli’s injuries were known, members of his chapter signed a card for him, but that was it.
‘None of the kids that were responsible like his pledge dad or their parents – no one ever reached out,’ Mary Pat said, adding ‘that has always been very hard for us to this day.’
She noted the university was very supportive. Both of her older children, Meredith and Nick, also attended the college, and Nick was in a fraternity.
When Nick met his ‘Big Brother,’ Mary Pat recalled, they had ‘a couple of beers and went home.’
In December 2024, former President Biden signed off on the anti-hazing bill that requires colleges with federal student aid to publicly report hazing incidents.
Mary Pat said she was not aware that the Phi Gamma Delta fraternity had been on probation at the time of the incident.
‘If I had known they already had violations and probation, I would have said [to Danny], “you should probably look for a different fraternity.”’
Today she and her husband, who recently retired, are their son’s full-time caregivers.
The family invested in a hands-free device that tracks Danny’s eye movements to help him communicate more, Mary Pat said, adding that he can hear very well.
‘He is more alert, a little more responsive, he is turning his head more,’ she said.
When asked if Santulli understands what happened, Mary Pat said that ‘there are times when he is emotional and gets tears, so we don’t like to talk about what happened in front of him. Maybe things are coming back. We don’t know.’
