It might take up to four months to get results of toxicology tests that could determine if the death of a Buffalo State college student last week was connected to an alleged hazing incident, a police spokesperson said Tuesday.

Bradley Doyley, 21, a former basketball player on the school’s team and a business major, was set to graduate in May.

“The most caring and loving person you could ever meet, “said Derrick Fernandez, 26, a former teammate and friend of Doyley’s. “He’s someone that would have had an impact on you and your life whether you knew him for 21 years or just one year.”

Doyley was pledging the Alpha Phi Alpha chapter at Buffalo State according to interviews with several of his friends. He was forced to drink something toxic, according to his friends and became ill for several weeks before passing last Thursday, his friends said.

“I don’t know for sure what he had to drink,” said Akeem Williams, 22, another former teammate and friend of Doyley. “I heard detergent the first time. Then I heard bleach, but I ain’t heard anything definite.”

The school’s students and basketball team honored Doyley with a moment of silence before last Friday’s game.

Both Buffalo State and the national Alpha Phi Alpha governing body suspended the chapter at the University.

Doyley, a Brooklyn native, is the most recent of several New York students who have been involved in fatal incidents allegedly related to hazing.

 

Five Baruch College members of Pi Delta Psi are currently on trial for the murder of Chun Hsien Deng who died in Pennsylvania in 2013 while on a weekend fraternity retreat in Tunkhannock Township

Deng was forced to walk across a frozen yard wearing a backpack weighted with sand in it, according to news reports. At the same time, fraternity members were trying to tackle him.

He was knocked unconscious and his soon-to-be fraternity brothers delayed in getting him medical help.

The trial, which is happening in Monroe County, Pennsylvania, began in December. Reached by phone, Judge Richard S. Claypool of Magisterial District Court declined to comment on the trial bur said he “expects the case to go on for a long time.”

Another New York student committed suicide in March 2014 after he was hazed by the Phi Sigma Kappa chapter at Penn State Altoona.

Marquise Braham was 18 when he jumped off the roof of the Marriott Long Island hotel in Nassau County. His family sued the university and the fraternity according to news reports.

Braham had been a member of the fraternity for a few months after he endured hazing during the pledging process and also witnessed other pledges getting hazed, according to news reports. The chapter was suspended for six years according to a news report.

College administrators are aware of the hazing issue but say they have limited control over what students do in the fraternity houses.

“The culture of hazing has so many elements it’s hard to say what exactly draws the students to it,” Paul Boxer said, a psychology professor at Rutgers University. “There’s the idea that it brings brothers closer together and that its tradition as well.”

Boxer also points out that fraternities have a tradition that new members have to earn their letters and place in the frat just as they would have to earn their success in the workplace.

Doyley’s friends regret that the wish to belong may have led to his death.

“It’s just unfortunate,” Williams said. “Someone wanting to be a part of something and getting treated like that.”

A spokesperson for the Alpha Phi Alpha national office declined to comment on the Doyley case but noted that hazing is a direct violation of the fraternity’s rules and regulations.