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Disturbing police-worn body camera footage from a hazing incident at the University of Iowa captured legions of shirtless and blindfolded frat pledges covered in food in a dark basement.
The bodycam footage — which has received millions of views across social media since it was uploaded to YouTube on Tuesday — captured police and firefighters responding to a fire alarm at the Alpha Delta Phi fraternity in November 2024, according to the Iowa City Press Citizen.
As officers made their way to the basement of the house, they discovered 56 shirtless and blindfolded pledges behind the door of a dark room with food splattered all over them, the clip shows.
“Looks like we have quite a bit of hazing,” one officer tells a baseball cap-wearing man in the house who appeared not to be participating as a pledge in the ritual.
“I’ve already given multiple commands to clear the room and get out of here, but no one’s moving,” an officer said, as the video panned to the silent cultish crew still standing in the basement.
The officers also continually asked for someone who was “in charge,” and for the “house dad.”
One man dressed in a white hoodie also stood in the basement doorway drinking a beer, and identified himself as “Jose.”
As he hands an ID to one of the officers, Jose, later identified as the 21-year-old Joseph Gaya, tells the officer, “I think it’s fake.”
“Does anyone want to be forthcoming on what’s going on? Anyone? Because you’ve got to see it
from my perspective of, ‘What the f— did I just walk into?’” An officer asked the group of unmoving frat brothers — many of whom were barefoot.
Gaya then crassly responds to the officer, saying the fraternity is holding a “celebration of life.”
At one point, he even wiped off a red splattered substance from a pledge’s neck as an officer was determining if anyone was hurt, and asked the cop if he wanted to “taste it.”
A man who identified himself as the fraternity’s president was separately interviewed on camera and told an officer that the pledges were completing the “lead up to initiation.”
Gaya was arrested and charged the following day with interference of official acts, according to court records obtained by The Post.
A spokesperson for the University of Iowa previously told the Iowa City Press Citizen that he was not a University of Iowa student at the time of the incident.
The charges were dropped after the state motioned to dismiss the case against Gaya, records showed.
The University investigated the incident and ultimately suspended the fraternity for four years, until 2029, the outlet reported.
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