Video Inside Frat House Shows Hazing Incident That Left Teen Blind, Brain Damaged & Unable To Walk
fizkes | Shutterstock A family has released security camera footage of a hazing incident that left their son permanently brain-damaged in the hopes of getting justice.
In October 2021, then-18-year-old Danny Santulli was forced to drink an entire family-sized bottle of Tito’s Vodka and fed beer through a funnel at Phi Gamma Delta’s “Pledge Dad Reveal Night” at the University of Missouri.
After spending six weeks in the University of Missouri hospital ICU and then being transferred to a Colorado rehab for seven months, Santulli finally returned home, but the brain-damage and physical injuries were permanent.
The Phi Gamma Delta pledge was left with permanent brain damage after the hazing incident.
He will require care “for life” after receiving permanent brain damage from the incident that left him blind, unable to speak, and unable to walk. Danny Santulli’s family demanded felony charges against the fraternity brothers involved in the Missouri hazing incident.
After the incident occurred, the University of Missouri revoked the fraternity’s charter and proposed sanctions against 13 of its members while prosecutors charged one member with two misdemeanors for supplying alcohol to a minor. The Santulli family expressed their disapproval of the university’s response in an interview with ABC News.
“I do personally want to see specific kids get [Class D felonies], that’s going to wake them up,” said Tom Santulli, David’s father.“A misdemeanor is not going to wake them up.” When asked if their family thought that Danny had been hazed, they all gave a yes in agreement, criticizing the university for not taking this matter more seriously.
Unfortunately, that was not the case. In 2024, Ryan Delanty, the "pledge father" who had supplied an underage David with vodka on the night of the hazing incident, pleaded guilty to misdemeanor hazing and supplying alcohol to a minor as part of a plea agreement. He was sentenced to 6 months in jail, followed by 6 months of house arrest.
The video showed Danny being fed alcohol before becoming unresponsive.
Surveillance footage, exclusively obtained by Good Morning America, revealed what happened on the night of October 19th, 2021.
"They were given their family bottle of alcohol, and then they drank from it, and they took them upstairs, and for the next two hours, they drank and drank and drank," David Bianchi, the family's attorney, told Good Morning America.“We see one of the fraternity members putting a tube in Danny’s mouth with a funnel at the other end and pouring beer down his throat.”
Around 11 p.m. on the 19th, Danny can be seen losing his balance and toppling over to the floor, where some fraternity members lifted him and then placed him on a sofa in the other room.
After an hour and a half, around 12:30 a.m., Danny can be seen slipping off the couch to the ground as he struggles to move, eventually lying still. He was found 15 minutes later by a fraternity member who discovered that he was unresponsive.
Calling several members over to check on a still unresponsive Danny, they then decided to take him to the hospital, but by then it was already too late. "Just the fact that they knew he was in distress and his lips were blue, and nobody called 911. It's, like, I don't know. I mean, a 6-year-old calls 911," Mary Pat Santulli told ABC News.
When Danny arrived at the hospital, he was in cardiac arrest.
The teen wasn’t breathing, suffering from a near-lethal level of blood-alcohol content — a 0.46. "I saw Danny in the medical ICU at the hospital at Mizzou. And it's just — it's just a bunch of tubes everywhere," his brother, Nick Santulli, said of the scene. "And that's an image that will probably never leave my head.”
As the family struggles to cope with the fact that their brother and son will never be the same again, they vow to continue fighting for justice, wherever it may prevail.
"It makes me sick — sick to my stomach seeing the people involved — that harmed Danny walking around campus, acting like they did nothing wrong," his sister, who was a junior, said at the time of the incident.
However, the family refused to let their grief and sorrow envelop them, hoping for brighter days ahead. "We will get through it,” Danny’s father said. “We will get through it."
Danny's family has been advocating for anti-hazing legislation for years.
The Santulli family has been advocating for legislative change for years, and their efforts were not in vain. On December 24, 2024, President Joe Biden signed into law the Stop Campus Hazing Act, which was co-led by Senator Amy Klobuchar.
The Act, like its name states, aims to stop hazing on college campuses and requires universities to include hazing incidents in their annual safety report. “Universities have to come clean now. Now they have to publish incidents and so forth,” Tom Santulli told Dakota News Now.
But the family's advocacy didn't stop there. In 2025, "Danny's Law" was finally passed in Missouri. Essentially, the law grants immunity from prosecution to 911 callers in cases of hazing. The hope is that if the incidents occur on campus, students won't hesitate to seek vital medical help, as they did in Danny's case.
Isaac Serna-Diez is a writer who focuses on entertainment and news, social justice, and politics.
