Eleven student lacrosse players from Westhill High School in Syracuse, New York, will be facing criminal charges after reports of a hazing event were brought to the attention of law enforcement. The students allegedly staged a kidnapping scene in which the younger players were meant to believe they were being abducted. All eleven students involved turned themselves in to police by Thursday, May 1, after the promise of a lower charge for doing so.
Lacrosse Players Haze Younger Teammates
The hazing incident occurred on Thursday evening, April 23, 2025. According to reports, the older players on the team wanted to play a prank on the younger members. Although not all of the lacrosse team was involved, the school has cancelled the remainder of the season. Onondaga County District Attorney William Fitzpatrick gave a press conference on Tuesday, April 29, to explain the allegations.
There were a total of five victims. The rest of the lacrosse players involved dressed in all black, taking at least one victim to a remote area, where he was tied up and covered by a pillowcase, and thrown in the truck of a car. Based on a video recording of the incident, the threat of weapons, including what appeared to be a knife and a handgun, was used in the hazing to get the victim to comply and scare him.
The plan was for the victim to be tricked into believing he was being brought to McDonald’s. The driver was to pretend to be lost, and the rest of the assailants would jump out of the woods and stage a kidnapping. According to Fitzpatrick, “He was eventually returned home. There was a period when he thought he would be abandoned in the middle of nowhere. You can hear that some of the individuals found it amusing. I’ve seen the videotape of what happened to this young man. It is not a rite of passage. It is not a trivial matter. I don’t know how long this young man will be affected by what happened to him.”
The student lacrosse players were then given 48 hours to turn themselves in. “If you don’t – if you’re tougher than me, you’re a gambler and you’re going to play the odds, you don’t think you’re going to get caught – trust me, the men and women of the Onondaga County Sheriff’s Department are going to identify you,” the district attorney said. “You’ll be arrested, you’ll be prosecuted as an adult, and you’ll be charged with the very, very serious felony of kidnapping, perhaps in the second degree.”
According to ABC, Fitspatrick continued to push the issue beyond just the lacrosse players, this time speaking directly to parents of the alleged assailants. “Then don’t come crying to me two weeks from now and say, ‘you charged my little baby with kidnapping.’ Yeah, that’s right. Most of my prosecutors can win cases that are on videotape.” As of Thursday, May 1, all subjects had turned themselves over to police custody.
Alleged Offenders Face Criminal Charges
None of the lacrosse players involved have been named to the public, due to their ages at the time of the offense. All but at least one are under the age of 18, though the 18-year-old could also have their record sealed at the discretion of the courts. The ages of the offenders also help concerning New York State law, which has a Youthful Offender Law that can offer flexibility in possible punishment.
David Shapiro, lecturer at the University of New York, says the law is in place for a reason. “It’s recognition of the state of mind and the comparative development as a person moves from a child to an adult… fairly young age of the offenders would be considered at sentencing.” The requirements to fit this law are that the individuals must be between the ages of 16 and 19, as these lacrosse players were.
Adult perpetrators would be arraigned in adult court, while any teenage lacrosse players would be sent to family court. Any individual under the age of 16 is automatically sent to family court, but even those 18 and older could be ordered to the Youth Part of the Supreme Court, which may be more lenient. The DA can request certain treatment, but ultimately, the judge has the final say. Should any perpetrators be sent to the Youth portion, they could avoid jail time and be subject to similar services and programs as the family court.
“Once you put a person in the criminal justice system as a convict or delinquent, there’s a great probability that you’ve lost that person for the rest of his or her life,” Shapiro said. “The law recognizes that, and they allow judicial discretion to say: ‘Some individuals still possess hope. Some individuals have not committed crimes so egregious that we cannot sort of give them leniency.’”
It is unclear what the district attorney is going to recommend at this time, although the deal was that if the lacrosse players turned themselves in within 48 hours, which they did, the charges would drop to misdemeanor unlawful imprisonment. There has not yet been any information provided by the victims or the alleged perpetrators. As more information is released to the public, the story will be updated.
