SYRACUSE, NY — At least 11 high school students in Syracuse, New York, have 48 hours to turn themselves in or face felony charges of kidnapping for their alleged involvement in victimizing at least five younger lacrosse players in an incident the district attorney says “goes way beyond hazing.”
The incident took place last Thursday evening, when a group of Westhill High School students, who are not being named due to their age, decided “they were going to haze or play some sort of prank” on younger members of the school’s lacrosse team, Onondaga County District Attorney William Fitzpatrick said during a Tuesday news conference.
The remainder of the varsity boys’ lacrosse season has been canceled, Westhill Central School District Superintendent Stephen Dunham said Tuesday. While the majority of the team was not involved in the incident or aware of the plans ahead of time, Dunham said: “We must address the culture of the program, and the most appropriate way to do that is with a reset.”
Among the five victims identified by the Onondaga County Sheriff’s Office, one student was taken to a remote area in the county when people appeared from the woods, dressed in black and armed with what appeared to be at least one handgun and at least one knife, Fitzpatrick said.
That group put a pillowcase over that student’s head, then tied him up and threw him in the trunk of a car before he was left in a wooded area in the southern part of the county, the district attorney said.
“He was eventually returned home. There was a period of time where he thought he was going to be abandoned in the middle of nowhere,” Fitzpatrick said. “You can hear that some of the individuals found it amusing,” he said, referencing a videotape of the incident recovered during the investigation.
“I’ve seen the videotape of what happened to this young man. It is not a rite of passage. It is not a trivial matter. I don’t know how long this young man will be affected by what happened to him,” Fitzpatrick added. The arrangement, he said, was to deceive the student after a lacrosse game that they were going to McDonald’s and then take him home.
The driver of the vehicle purported to be lost in a remote part of the county before the “accomplices jumped out of the woods, pretending to be kidnappers,” he said.
The decision on whether to press charges has been removed from the young people victimized in the case and their parents, the district attorney said. “This case will be prosecuted and handled in a normal course of business,” he said.
In that scenario, they would not have bail set, they would be released to their parents’ custody and their case would be handled in family court – or if the individuals are too old for family court, “you will end this situation without a criminal conviction and a criminal record,” Fitzpatrick added.
At the news briefing, the district attorney spoke directly to at least 11 people believed to be involved in the incident, saying they have a one-time, 48-hour offer to turn themselves in to the sheriff’s department to face the crime of unlawful imprisonment, a misdemeanor.
“If you don’t – if you’re tougher than me, you’re a gambler and you’re going to play the odds, you don’t think you’re going to get caught – trust me, the men and women of the Onondaga County Sheriff’s Department are going to identify you,” the district attorney said.
“You’ll be arrested, you’ll be prosecuted as an adult, and you’ll be charged with the very, very serious felony of kidnapping, perhaps in the second degree.”
The Westhill Central School District’s policy “strictly prohibits” hazing “in all forms,” Dunham said Tuesday. “Hazing is an indefensible act. It can be humiliating and degrading, potentially causing physical and emotional harm,” he said.
The school district’s leadership “immediately” initiated an investigation and notified law enforcement upon learning about the off-campus incident involving several of their students, said Dunham in a message to the community on Monday.
Dunham “cannot comment or share specific details about student discipline,” he said.
At the news conference, Fitzpatrick said rumors surrounding the incident have “gotten completely out of control.”
Similarly, Dunham said “rumors, questions and comments about what happened have littered social media, gossip in the community” while the district handles the active investigation with an “abundance of care.”
“The time needed to conduct a thorough and accurate investigation in an effort to get things right hopefully doesn’t get misconstrued as the ‘district doing nothing,'” Dunham’s message continued.
The incident was initially reported by a school resource officer who contacted the sheriff’s department, which turned over the criminal investigation to the district attorney on Tuesday morning, said Onondaga County Undersheriff Jeffrey Passino.
Speaking to the parents of the students who may decide not to surrender, the district attorney said if the sheriff’s department expends the same time and effort on the case as they would on a homicide, “Then don’t come crying to me two weeks from now and say, ‘you charged my little baby with kidnapping.’ Yeah, that’s right. Most of my prosecutors can win cases that are on videotape.”
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