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Drowing Pledges NOW added to new ways to kill potential new brothers and sisters.
Hazing LOS ANGELES (AP) 9.10.02, 3:42p
-- Two women who drowned during a nighttime beach visit may have been
undergoing a sorority hazing, the mother of one victim said Tuesday.
Kenitha Saafir, 24, of Compton and Kristin High, 22, of Los Angeles were
pulled to shore in Playa del Rey by police officers but pronounced dead at
the scene, authorities said. High, a California Sate University, Los
Angeles, student and mother of a 2-year-old son, had been undergoing an
initiation rite for the Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority, her mother, Pat Fargas,
told KCAL-TV.
"She's crying back from her death to say stop this hazing," Fargas said.
Fargas alleged the women had been undergoing initiation rituals for weeks.
They'd been pushed into the water blindfolded and with their hands tied, the
station said.
"I tried to talk to all of them this weekend and said stop it, and I'm gonna
call and report this, and now it's too late," she said. Police said they
could not immediately confirm the account. Uniformed officers were sent to a
Playa del Rey beach at about 11:30 p.m. Monday by reports of women
screaming, Officer Eduardo Funes said in a statement. The officers were met
by four people who said that two of their friends "were swept into the ocean
and had not come out," Funes said.
The officers removed their leather belts and boots and dove into the ocean
in heavy surf, located the women and pulled them out. Attempts by the
officers and paramedics to revive them failed.
The sorority had no information on the incident, Executive Director Betty
James said from its Chicago headquarters.
"The sorority expresses its condolences to the families and will cooperate
with authorities in their investigation," she said. Alpha Kappa Alpha has an
anti-hazing policy adopted two years ago by the National Pan-Hellenic
Council, Inc., which includes representatives of nine historically black
fraternities and sororities. The policy calls for holding people who engage
in hazing "personally liable to the victim and to answer to the law and the
organization," according to the Alpha Kappa Alpha Web site.
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