Four San Diego State University fraternity members have pleaded not guilty to setting a pledge on fire, leaving him with third-degree burns over 16% of his body.
Caden Cooper, 22, Lucas Cowling and Christopher Serrano, both 20, and Lars Larsen, 19, were arraigned Monday and released on their own recognizance after agreeing not to recruit new members, participate in fraternity parties or drink if under age, the San Diego County District Attorney’s Office said in a statement.
All four were either active members or pledges of Phi Kappa Psi fraternity. They were each charged with at least one felony, including recklessly causing a fire with great bodily injury, conspiracy to commit an act injurious to the public, and violating the social host ordinance, prosecutors said.
The fire was part of a skit planned by Cowling, Serrano and Larsen, in which Serrano was directed to set Larsen ablaze, according to prosecutors. Cowling was a pledge board member at the frat, while Serrano and Larsen were recruits. Cooper was the frat’s president.
The incident happened last February, when the fraternity was already on probation by the university, authorities said. Despite that, they planned a huge frat-house party that would include the skit.
“After consuming alcohol in Cowling’s presence, the underage students executed the skit, which caused burns to Larsen on 16% of his body, primarily on his legs,” prosecutors said. “Larsen spent weeks in the hospital for treatment of third-degree burns.”
But they didn’t stop there. After Larsen wound up in the hospital with severe burns, he, Cooper and Cowling actively tried to cover up the affair, making “a concerted effort to thwart law enforcement’s efforts to investigate the incident by lying to law enforcement personnel, deleting evidence on social media, and instructing other fraternity members to delete evidence and not speak to anyone about the incident,” the prosecutor’s office said.
Convictions could bring sentences ranging from probation to seven years and two months in prison, the attorney general’s office said.
This was not the first dark mark against an SDSU fraternity. Several incidents have sparked investigations over the years, and Phi Kappa Psi was just one of a half dozen frats that have been put on probation over the past two years. Before that, in 2020, SDSU looked into allegations that a fraternity leader had promoted blackout drinking, and a year earlier that a freshman had died of a skull fracture after a night of drinking sent him tumbling out of his bunk.
With News Wire Services
