The Coconino County Medical Examiner's Office released autopsy findings Monday confirming that 18-year-old Northern Arizona University student Colin Daniel Martinez died of alcohol poisoning following a Delta Tau Delta fraternity rush event on January 31. His blood alcohol content measured .425%—more than five times Arizona's legal driving limit and well into the range medical experts consider fatal.
The autopsy detailed the physiological devastation of severe alcohol poisoning: lung and brain swelling caused by fluid shifting from Martinez's bloodstream into his organs. According to court documents, Martinez and three other pledges collectively consumed two 1.75-liter bottles of vodka throughout the evening as part of what witnesses described as a required drinking game for membership.
Three fraternity executive board members—New Member Educator Carter Eslick, Vice President Ryan Creech, and Treasurer Riley Cass, all 20 years old at the time—were arrested on hazing charges. The Coconino County Attorney's Office continues to review the case to determine whether formal charges will be filed. Delta Tau Delta's national organization has voted to permanently close the NAU chapter.
For Colin Martinez's family, these findings offer no comfort—only confirmation of a nightmare they've been living since January.
But for those who work in hazing litigation, the autopsy results confirmed something else: that this tragedy follows a pattern that has repeated itself with devastating consistency across different campuses, different fraternities, and different decades.
"The Exact Same Blood Alcohol"
David Bianchi, a hazing attorney who has represented victims' families in numerous high-profile cases, told FOX 10 Phoenix and ABC15 that the .425% blood alcohol level, while shocking to the general public, represents a number he encounters with disturbing regularity.
"I've had a number of cases exactly like this, with the exact same blood alcohol," Bianchi said. "Every time it happens, people say, 'This has got to be the last time, we can never let this happen again.' And unfortunately, it always happens again."
What David is identifying isn't just a tragic coincidence or a series of isolated incidents, but a pattern—one that reveals how fraternity hazing operates with shocking consistency despite decades of awareness campaigns, university policies, and criminal statutes designed to prevent exactly these outcomes.
The blood alcohol levels are similar because the hazing rituals follow a nearly identical script. Forced rapid alcohol consumption. Pledges pressured to finish entire bottles. Drinking games structured to ensure dangerous intoxication levels. A culture that treats extreme alcohol poisoning not as a medical emergency but as a rite of passage, something to be "slept off" rather than treated.
Andrew Coffey died at Florida State University in 2017 with a blood alcohol content in this same deadly range after being handed a bottle of bourbon and told to finish it. Daniel Santulli, who survived his 2021 hazing at the University of Missouri but was left blind, unable to walk, and unable to communicate, was ordered to consume similar quantities of vodka.
The numbers are consistent because the traditions are consistent. And the traditions persist because the consequences for perpetrators remain inconsistent.
The Pattern Behind the Pattern
Colin Martinez's case followed the fraternity hazing script precisely. Court documents reveal that witnesses reported "readjusting his sleeping position, checking his pulse and breathing, and looking up symptoms of alcohol poisoning throughout the night." The parallels to previous cases, while eerie, are structural.
What the pattern tells us is that this isn't about individual fraternity chapters making isolated bad decisions. This is about a culture that has normalized extreme alcohol abuse as part of membership initiation, combined with institutional responses that have failed to create meaningful deterrence.
Dr. Andrew Carroll, a family physician interviewed by FOX 10, explained the physiological devastation: "Your heart starts to suffer; your heart probably starts to go into some arrhythmias where the heart is not beating correctly. The liver is overloaded, so that starts to have to be overworked. Your kidneys are overloaded with all this waste product that your body is trying to handle, and it just can't handle it."
But the question isn't what happens inside the body during alcohol poisoning. Medical science understands that perfectly well. The question is what happens inside institutions—universities, fraternity national headquarters, prosecutor's offices—that allows this pattern to continue despite that understanding.
Why "It Always Happens Again"
The reason these tragedies repeat with such consistency is that the consequences for perpetrators remain unpredictable and often insufficient to create genuine deterrence.
Some cases result in felony charges and prison time. Others produce misdemeanor pleas with probation. Still others result in no criminal charges at all. The variability depends not on the severity of the harm but on the jurisdiction, the prosecutor's approach, and often the public pressure generated by media coverage.
Universities contribute to this inconsistency. Internal disciplinary processes drag on for months or even years. In some cases, students responsible for fatal hazing incidents sometimes graduate before the university completes its review. The message is clear: you might face consequences eventually, but you won't face them swiftly or certainly.
In the NAU case, Delta Tau Delta's national organization took the significant step of permanently closing the chapter, but national organizations closing chapters after deaths have already occurred, while important, is reactive rather than preventive.
What's missing is the front-end accountability that would prevent these events from happening in the first place: immediate, certain, and severe consequences for anyone involved in planning or executing hazing activities.
Swift and decisive measures would mean:
- Immediate expulsion for every student involved in planning, facilitating, or participating in hazing events. Not after an investigation that takes months. Not after an internal disciplinary hearing with multiple appeals. Immediately, upon evidence that hazing occurred.
- Permanent charter revocation for any fraternity or sorority where hazing takes place. Not interim suspension. Not probation. Not "self-governance" plans that allow the organization to police itself. Permanent closure.
- Aggressive criminal prosecution that treats these cases with the seriousness they deserve. A .425% blood alcohol level doesn't happen by accident. It happens because people forced or coerced someone to consume deadly quantities of alcohol.
The Coconino County Attorney's Office is still reviewing whether to file formal charges against the three arrested fraternity leaders. That review should be swift, and the charges should reflect the severity of the outcome: Colin Martinez is dead. Three fraternity officers facilitated the event that killed him. The connection between their actions and his death is not ambiguous.
Colin Martinez deserved better than to die on an air mattress while people Googled symptoms instead of calling 911. He deserved better than to be treated as collateral damage in a tradition that values membership rituals over human life. He deserved an institution that would have expelled every student involved in planning that January 31 event before it ever took place.
And the students who will attend NAU next semester, who will walk past the Delta Tau Delta house that no longer operates, who will consider joining Greek life at other universities—they deserve institutions that demonstrate, through actions rather than statements, that hazing will result in immediate, certain, and severe consequences.
Until that happens, the pattern we describe will continue. The blood alcohol levels will remain consistent because the traditions remain consistent. And families will continue receiving the worst news imaginable because institutions continue prioritizing process over protection.
Colin Martinez's death should be the last time. Whether it actually will be depends entirely on whether the institutions responsible for student safety are finally willing to back up their anti-hazing policies with the kind of swift, decisive action that creates genuine deterrence.