It happened Friday evening. By Saturday morning, a UDK editor had heard rumors that someone was hurt and sent me to investigate.
I drove to the house. Through the front door, propped open, I could see a table with crumpled plastic cups and glass bottles. When I asked two members about what happened, they told me to leave the property. I stayed in the area, talking to people in the fraternity next door. From them, I got hearsay and a name.
A Lawrence police sergeant told me a man was injured diving into a pool there. A Lawrence fire-medical battalion chief, citing confidentiality laws, would only tell me the injuries were severe enough to justify sending him to a level one trauma hospital.
There are only so many level one trauma centers in the area. My first call, KU Hospital, confirmed it. Fritzie was a patient there. They forwarded me to his room, where his father answered, and told me he had no comment.
So we published a story.
Since students in the Greek community refused to speak to me, the next day I had been canvassing campus and found a woman who was at the party. Then, the fraternity released a statement. We published a follow-up with the new details.
The Lawrence Journal-World's first coverage of the accident was a short brief in its Tuesday edition. And Kansas City media didn't get on the story until the next weekend.
Over the week, I continued to canvass campus. Greeks refused to talk on the record, but many offered tips and rumors. I found another woman who was there, willing to speak on the record, who described a temporary pool and offered a time frame for the party. It ended about five and a half hours after paramedics took Fritzie away.
Friday, a week after the party, the University placed the fraternity on interim suspension. The international fraternity also released a statement saying it had suspended its KU chapter. We published a quick story on our website Friday, and a more thorough article for Monday's print paper.
We posted updates as they came, when Fritzie was released from the hospital, and when he was transferred to a Colorado rehabilitation hospital.
Less than a month later, KU pulled another major Friday news announcement, placing the fraternity on probation for two years. We immediately posted a quick story on our website.
I had the weekend to read through KU's lengthy report (as well as cover and write an unrelated story), and we published a long story about the report and probation for Monday's paper.
It ended my involvement in a tragic story that still continues. Fritzie later sued KU and the fraternity. The lawsuit is pending.
This awful accident has much, much larger ramifications than my career. But the experience taught me invaluable lessons: I learned about fighting bad timing with web-first coverage, putting the breaking stuff up immediately and coming back with better depth and analysis for the print paper. I learned about dealing with sensitive, medical issues, and the reluctance of city officials to comment. I learned how to respond to a tight-knit community that circles the wagons in trouble. I learned how to use every possible source, even if it's off-the-record, to advance my reporting.
