A college student in San Marcos, Texas, has filed a lawsuit against a fraternity after a group of its members allegedly attacked him in October.
Texas State University student Nikolas Panagiotopoulos said he was walking down North Comanche Street when members of the Pi Kappa Phi Eta Rho fraternity mistook him for a member of a different group, according to KVUE.
Cell phone video taken from a building above the street where the alleged attack occurred showed a group of people fighting in the street, according to CBS Austin.
Moments later, one person, reportedly Panagiotopoulos, ran away from the crowd as several of them followed and tackled him to the pavement, leaving him unconscious.
The student’s attorney, Jay Harvey, said his client was trying to stop a fight between his friend and members of the fraternity when the incident transpired.
Harvey said Panagiotopoulos spent weeks in the hospital following the incident and suffered a traumatic brain injury, a fractured skull, and a spinal injury.
“The fraternity’s got to learn to exercise some level of control over these members and can’t encourage an out of control group of young men as the accepted policy on the way they conduct themselves,” he stated.
The Pi Kappa Phi fraternity, which has chapters nationwide, said its mission is to “create an uncommon and lifelong brotherhood that develops leaders and encourages service to others for the betterment of our communities.”
In a statement, the university wrote that once it was notified of the alleged attack, the fraternity was suspended.
However, the group condones excessive drinking on its social media pages, according to Harvey.
“What we’re going to have to show is either a lack of control, a lack of institutional control by the fraternity and the local or a culture, an encouraged culture of this type of out of control activity,” he concluded.