BATON ROUGE, La. — The following is a statement from the family of Max Gruver, who died during an alleged hazing incident on the LSU campus in 2017.
Losing our son, Max, is the most pain we will ever, ever endure on this earth. Max was a really good kid. Well liked. Very easy to get along with and often reached out to others to ensure they felt included. He was very caring.
Through the motion filed today, Mr. Naquin’s defense has made it clear that they are going to try to justify Mr. Naquin’s actions by resorting to an old, tired tactic. Like so many other times over the past decades, a fraternity member has sought to evade responsibility for killing a fine young man by blaming the victim. This is not new. Time and again fraternities hurt and kill others by hazing and try to push the blame elsewhere. No more.
This motion is nothing but a cruel ploy to harm Max’s reputation for the benefit of those responsible for his death. Mr. Naquin’s defense attempted to silence our family with the threat of this motion – however, we know who our son was and have no fear of the truth.
Mr. Naquin’s defense is well aware that the interviews they cite in their motion are hearsay and given by fraternity members who have an interest in painting Max in negative light. It was at their fraternity that our son was hazed and killed. It was their fraternity that had numerous hazing and other violations with LSU, the most recent being just two semesters before our son died. Hazing is a problem throughout the Greek culture at LSU, as recent reports reaffirm, with students being submitted to beatings, manipulation, substance abuse, and God knows what else.
The crime is in the facts. Fraternity brothers hazed our son, and two have pled guilty no contest; a third implicated the others in their deadly choices. Were it not for the hazing and actions of people who were supposed to be his brothers, our son would be alive today.