Prosecutors are now charging 12 former Florida A&M University band members with manslaughter for the November 2011 hazing death of a drum major, Robert Champion, the Associated Press reports.
State Attorney Jeff Ashton “thought the proper charges in the case would be manslaughter and hazing with death,” Assistant State Attorney Nicole Pegues wrote in an e-mail sent to the defendants’ attorneys.
Champion died in Orlando. He collapsed following a beating during a hazing ritual. It happened on a bus parked in a hotel parking lot after Florida A&M played Bethune-Cookman in their annual rivalry football game. He died of internal bleeding.
Read more at CNN.