BOWLING GREEN — Madelyn Borja recalled what she last wrote to her boyfriend, Stone Foltz, on the night of March 4, 2021.
“I love you. Be safe. Let me know if you need me tonight,” she said.
Mr. Foltz had previously expressed nervousness to Ms. Borja about attending “Big-Little” night, a fraternity initiation event for Bowling Green State University’s Pi Kappa Alpha, or Pike, fraternity. He’d heard it would be a night of heavy drinking, and Ms. Borja encouraged him not to go if he didn’t want to.
He did anyway and just a few hours after the event began at 9 p.m., Ms. Borjas found herself on the phone with a 9-1-1 operator, while Mr. Foltz’s roommate, Wade Mackenzie, performed CPR in their apartment’s living room.
“I heard him stop breathing on the phone and that's when I started panicking more," Ms. Borja said.
This week, Jacob Krinn, 21, of Delaware, Ohio, and Troy Henricksen, 24, of Grove City, Ohio, are on trial in Wood County Common Pleas Court in connection to Mr. Foltz’s death.
They — along with six co-defendants who have already pleaded guilty to various crimes — are accused of hazing Mr. Foltz and his fellow pledges and that hazing, the state has argued, ultimately lead to Mr. Foltz’s death by alcohol poisoning on March 7, 2021.
Mr. Krinn and Mr. Henricksen each face multiple criminal charges, including involuntary manslaughter, reckless homicide, and hazing, among others.
Ms. Borja was one of six witnesses to take the stand Monday.
In the weeks leading up to March 4, 2021, Ms. Borja said her boyfriend would come away from fraternity events in tears, often.
On one particular night — “preamble night” or an evening in February where pledges were required to recite from memory the Pike preamble — Ms. Borja had planned to drive to the Columbus area with Mr. Foltz for the weekend. But he kept messaging her, delaying their departure time into the early morning hours the next day.
When he was finally released from the meeting, Ms. Borja said he was distraught.
"He was crying and he was telling me that they gave him more time to memorize it because he was the only one that couldn't get it,” Ms. Borja said.
"Stone insisted that he was too anxious to fall asleep ... so we chose to make the drive to Columbus that night,” Ms. Borja said. They arrived at around 3 a.m., she testified.
On the day of March 4, 2021, Ms. Borja said she and Mr. Foltz talked throughout the day. He wasn’t a heavy drinker — often preferring to take on the role of designated driver — and he was anxious.
“He told me that he didn’t even want to go,” Ms. Borja said. “And he said, ‘Well it’s the last thing I need to do to get into Pike.’”
Later that night, close to 11 p.m., Mr. Foltz’s roommate, Mr. Mackenzie texted Ms. Borja to come over — Mr. Foltz was passed out on the couch and he didn’t want to “babysit” him alone.
Shortly thereafter Ms. Borja arrived with a couple of friends in tow and Mr. Mackenzie said, “We realized [Stone’s] face was starting to get blue."
According to Brian Gutman, an EMT with the Bowling Green fire department, it took emergency services roughly six minutes to respond to the apartment. When his team arrived, law enforcement had already taken over compressions from Mr. Mackenzie.
Mr. Gutman testified that his team was unable to find a pulse and saw that Mr. Foltz was not breathing.
When Mr. Foltz arrived at the Wood County Hospital, he was immediately transferred to the emergency room’s resuscitation room, Dr. Ross McDermott, an emergency room doctor, said.
Tests showed that the 20-year-old’s pupils were not dilating, that he was unresponsive to any kind of stimuli, including verbal communication, and that he had no visible signs of trauma. Mr. Foltz’s pulse had returned, but his blood pressure rang in at 50/30, which according to Dr. McDermott, is significantly lower than normal human blood pressure.
Further testing found almost 400 milligrams of ethanol per deciliter of blood in Mr. Foltz’s system, which according to online reports, is possibly fatal. Additional tests showed swelling in his brain, consistent with having been starved of oxygen, Dr. McDermott said.
"The brain was swollen to the point where it all just looked like one homogenous mass," the emergency room doctor said, later adding, “Because he was so intoxicated, he was unable to protect his airway and so he stopped breathing.”
As a consequence, his heart stopped, the doctor said.
After 2½ hours at Wood County Hospital, Dr. McDermott made the call to LifeFlight Mr. Foltz to ProMedica Toledo Hospital, which he said would have a greater array of resources at their disposal.
Other witnesses from Monday included Mackenzie Wells, a friend of Mr. Foltz’s who contacted Pikes on the night of March 4, 2021, in an attempt to get information, and Aaron Lehane, another resident at 318 Main St. and a former Pike.
Ms. Wells testified that she called Mr. Krinn personally, but that the conversation was short. It sounded like he was in a crowded bar, she said.
Mr. Lehane, who pleaded guilty to multiple misdemeanors stemming from hazing, confirmed prior testimony that the spring 2021 Pike pledge class was thought of as “soft” or “weak” by active members.
He said this was because they didn’t help clean up after Pike parties — a responsibility he’d had to complete when he was a pledge — and noted that they’d gotten out of the fire-making challenge, a task that required the Pike pledges to keep a fire lit for a day or longer.
“It’s annoying,” he testified. On cross-examination, the defense pointed out that this was evidence that the pledges were capable of voicing their opinions and being listened to without serious consequences.
“The pledges had a say,” Mr. Lehane testified, but he also said he expected the pledges to “drink their bottle” to prove that they weren’t soft.
In the spring of 2021, he wrote of the group, “They are softer than 10-ply.”
Mr. Lehane was also involved in the clean-up following the March 4, 2021 party.
The police did not find any bottles when they searched the residence at 318 Main St., called “Bando.”
“Why?” Prosecutor Paul Dobson asked.
“Because we cleaned them up,” Mr. Lehane said.
Testimony is scheduled to resume Tuesday morning. Wood County Prosecutor Paul Dobson said Monday that he believes the state will rest its case on Wednesday.
First Published May 23, 2022, 9:24 p.m.
