At least three FAMU students or graduates from metro Atlanta have been arrested on charges that they participated in the hazing death of Robert Champion, a FAMU drum major whose family lives in Decatur. They include two drum majors and a student previously charged in a separate hazing incident.
Marietta’s Jonathan Boyce, who was the band’s head drum major until he graduated in December, turned himself in to authorities in Leon County, Fla., Friday afternoon.
On Thursday, authorities arrested Shawn Turner, who was also a drum major, and Aaron Golson, who was charged with hazing in December in a separate incident.
None of the three could be reached for comment Friday.
In a cruel and ironic twist, it appears that Boyce and Turner marched in their band uniforms in a procession at Champion's funeral. Photographs show several young men in the distinctive drum majors' regalia marching ahead of a horse-drawn hearse.
"That’s the whole irony of all this hazing stuff," said Reggie Brayon, co-producer of the stage show “Drumline Live” and former band booster president at Southwest DeKalb. "You go through it, and at the end of the day you say, ‘now we’re brothers.’”
As of Friday afternoon, police had arrested 10 of the 11 band members charged with felony hazing.
In a statement, Gretl Plessinger, a spokeswoman for the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, said authorities believe the 11th person is a woman in Georgia. Law enforcement agents have been in contact with her family. Two other members of the band -- neither of whom have been arrested yet -- are facing lesser criminal charges.
The 13 defendants have not been charged with murder or manslaughter, but rather hazing, because the autopsy indicated that Champion died after a series of blows. Officials said that made it difficult for investigators to identify who might have delivered the fatal blow.
Champion, a graduate of Southwest DeKalb High School and its vaunted marching band, died Nov. 19, after he was found unconscious aboard a Florida A&M University band bus in Orlando.
That was at least 10 days after university officials and Tallahassee police learned of the alleged hazing of band member Bria Hunter, also a graduate of Southwest DeKalb. Hunter told officials that she had suffered a broken thigh during one of several brutal hazing sessions she underwent while trying to get into a band subgroup of Georgians known as the "Red Dawg Order."
Golson was one of three students later charged with injuring Hunter, but those charges were not filed until weeks after Champion's death.
Before the alleged hazing of Champion, band director Julian White had suspended three band members named to him by Hunter's parents as participants in the attack on her. They did not include Golson.
Craig J. Brown, a Tallahassee attorney who represented Golson when he was charged in hazing Hunter, said at the time, “he has never been hazed and his position is he wouldn’t have hazed anyone.” Brown did not return phone calls Friday.
On Nov. 29, the university expelled Boyce, Turner two other students in connection with Champion's death. But their dismissals were soon lifted at the request of investigators.
According to Boyce's Facebook page, he graduated Dec. 16.
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