Pledge’s Family To Pursue Lawsuit Idaho Student Dies During Hazing For University Of Texas Group

The family of an Idaho student who died during a hazing incident at the University of Texas intends to pursue its lawsuit against a spirit group and others for damages even though a grand jury refused criminal indictments.

The Bastrop County grand jury declined to issue indictments against members of the Texas Cowboys on Wednesday after hearing evidence in the drowning of Gabriel Benjamin “Gabe” Higgins of Pocatello, a sophomore mechanical engineering student.

“They’re not under the stress anymore of waiting to see what the grand jury is going to do,” Cowboy attorney Scott Young said. “They’re pleased that part of this should be over now, even though it doesn’t change the fact of the tragedy.”

In September, the Cowboys were suspended for five years for hazing, and school officials said that will stand. Higgins, 19, drowned April 29 while swimming fully clothed in the Colorado River near Bastrop during a Cowboys’ initiation ceremony.

An autopsy found that Higgins was drunk when he died.

State investigators are still trying to determine whether any laws were broken by those who provided alcohol to the underage Cowboys.

But the attorney for the Higgins family expressed disappointment at the grand jury’s decision.

“The only people involved were the Cowboys,” Jack Price said, “and they weren’t going to incriminate themselves. Of course, Gabe Higgins wasn’t there to speak. It was probably a rough thing for the district attorney to present.”

The family last August sued the Cowboys, six former officers and the man who owned the land where the drowning occurred for compensatory damages for Higgins death and punitive damages for negligence.

Higgins was “physically whipped, beaten and struck” as part of the initiation ritual, according to papers filed in the lawsuit.

“The statements that I saw last summer when we were representing the Cowboys at the university were fairly consistent, that nobody forced the group of men to go down to the river and go swimming,” Young said.