Mr. Groover
Appearances
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Death in the Dorms Season 2: Episode 4: Max Gruver
Him and I were Snapchatting, and he had told me he had gone to dinner with some friends, and then he was going to run by the fraternity house. And I Snapchatted to him, I love you, and he snapped back, you know, I love you too.
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Death in the Dorms Season 2: Episode 4: Max Gruver
So many things were coming in. I was amazed how many people knew about it. I mean, again, it's on social media. All of a sudden, like, I'm on the plane, and before we took off, I get a text from a friend of mine, and she says, You know, please tell me it's not true. I just got a text from my daughter. And, you know, I just, you know, started crying harder.
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Death in the Dorms Season 2: Episode 4: Max Gruver
And I'm like, how could that be real, right? How does this friend already know and her daughter goes to school at Georgia Southern?
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Death in the Dorms Season 2: Episode 4: Max Gruver
A whole group of folks from LSU asked if they could come see us. And they were very forthright with information and that it potentially was, you know, a hazing incident and something happened at the Phi Dota Theta house and there would be an ongoing investigation. That, you know, obviously makes you very angry, right?
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Death in the Dorms Season 2: Episode 4: Max Gruver
Because you know that something happened to your son that shouldn't have happened to your son. that Max died from hazing in the fraternity house, a fraternity that has zero tolerance for hazing. So you're getting all these details and you're like, how could this possibly have happened?
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Death in the Dorms Season 2: Episode 4: Max Gruver
That afternoon, we were able to go see Max. And, you know, we hadn't seen him yet. They had done an autopsy on him that morning. And in the afternoon, they called and said, you know, we could come and see him. That may be the worst moment of all of this, was seeing him. Was seeing him in the funeral home on a slab in a... He was just in a white t-shirt and a thin blanket was over him.
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Death in the Dorms Season 2: Episode 4: Max Gruver
We got married pretty quickly. We were engaged within the first year. And we ended up in Roswell, Georgia, which is just north of Atlanta. And that's where we got our first house. That's where we started our family.
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Death in the Dorms Season 2: Episode 4: Max Gruver
I mean, that's when it really became real. Like, that was actually him.
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Death in the Dorms Season 2: Episode 4: Max Gruver
Really, all you want to know is what happened? How could this happen to my son? You know, what led up to it? Who's responsible? And Hiller and Morgan made sure that all those questions were answered.
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Death in the Dorms Season 2: Episode 4: Max Gruver
Max was our first. We were very excited. And he came to us on January 27, 1999.
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Death in the Dorms Season 2: Episode 4: Max Gruver
From the beginning, you knew he was something special when he was just a little baby. I walked into the room and Max is sitting in his crib and he had one of his Mickey Mouses sitting here and another Mickey Mouse sitting here. And this is before he could even really talk, right? But he's got a book out in front. He's pretending to read to his two Mickeys.
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Death in the Dorms Season 2: Episode 4: Max Gruver
Growing up, he was such an avid reader and he loves sports.
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Death in the Dorms Season 2: Episode 4: Max Gruver
The minute he could start throwing a ball, he'd pick it up and throw a ball. He loved when his brother would play and we'd go to his games.
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Death in the Dorms Season 2: Episode 4: Max Gruver
We were definitely getting more information and more information was coming out. And it's just shocking, right? This is my son's last night on earth, and he's being forced to drink copious amounts of alcohol. For what reason? To join an organization, to be a brother to somebody else? What exactly is anyone proving to someone else if they can drink copious amounts of 190 proof grain alcohol?
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Death in the Dorms Season 2: Episode 4: Max Gruver
And then I just, I know I kept thinking about what was Max's last night like? Like, was he in pain? Did he know anything was going on? Did he know he started getting sick?
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Death in the Dorms Season 2: Episode 4: Max Gruver
We know that Max died from the coroner around 4 or 5 a.m.
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Death in the Dorms Season 2: Episode 4: Max Gruver
He died because he had so much liquid in his lungs from vomiting and just inhaling it. And just the horror that goes through that level of intoxication and death happened to Max on that couch. It's painful they let him die on that couch and did nothing, never called 911, never did anything to try to save his life.
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Death in the Dorms Season 2: Episode 4: Max Gruver
Max and Alex, they're almost exactly two years apart. Those two were fast friends, very close brothers from the beginning.
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Death in the Dorms Season 2: Episode 4: Max Gruver
That's how your child, you know, leaves you and leaves this earth. I mean, it's horrific.
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Death in the Dorms Season 2: Episode 4: Max Gruver
We learned through the investigation that, you know, Matthew just did not like my son. because he was supposedly late to certain events, and Matthew had it out for him.
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Death in the Dorms Season 2: Episode 4: Max Gruver
The Monday night before, the Bible study, the executive board had had a meeting about Matthew because of his dangerous and reckless activity with the pledges.
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Death in the Dorms Season 2: Episode 4: Max Gruver
After Alex, four years later, we had Lily Kate.
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Death in the Dorms Season 2: Episode 4: Max Gruver
And then two nights later, him and his buddies were in charge of this Bible study, and he killed my son.
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Death in the Dorms Season 2: Episode 4: Max Gruver
Her team wasn't going to be able to play because no one would step up and coach the team. Well, Max is like, well, I'll do it.
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Death in the Dorms Season 2: Episode 4: Max Gruver
We had very specific conversations with Hill and Morgan about how they're going to prosecute the bad actors in Max's case. They had to go through a lot more work to try to figure out how to hold these individuals responsible. Ultimately, the most responsible individual, Matthew Nockin,
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Death in the Dorms Season 2: Episode 4: Max Gruver
I am so appreciative of the DA team and Hiller Moore knowing that that Matthew needed to be charged with something. He was not just going to be charged with hazing because Max died.
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Death in the Dorms Season 2: Episode 4: Max Gruver
That's how Max got to that level of alcohol poisoning within his system, and that's what killed him.
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Death in the Dorms Season 2: Episode 4: Max Gruver
When we went to trial about two years later, 2019, it was a very hard two weeks.
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Death in the Dorms Season 2: Episode 4: Max Gruver
Both of us just broke down in tears and just cried because We got some closure from this. They did convict.
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Death in the Dorms Season 2: Episode 4: Max Gruver
He started working for a company called Def Pen Radio. Max wrote over 360 articles on basketball. That was his dream. He wanted to continue that.
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Death in the Dorms Season 2: Episode 4: Max Gruver
After the trial was over, we wanted to decompress, and we couldn't think of any place better to go than to Chime's, certainly his favorite restaurant.
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Death in the Dorms Season 2: Episode 4: Max Gruver
The whole time, Max has been guiding us down this path to try to create change. So we created the Max Gruver Foundation, which is about helping to create that change.
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Death in the Dorms Season 2: Episode 4: Max Gruver
You know, we've spoken to well over, I don't know, 150 or so organizations, you know, probably over 150,000 students total at this point.
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Death in the Dorms Season 2: Episode 4: Max Gruver
We try to get as many folks from the university there as possible, certainly Greek life. But we welcome all the sports teams, all the clubs, when we go and speak. And we want to educate them on what hazing is. And just how bad it is and how it can escalate and turn into something horrible like what happened to our son.
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Death in the Dorms Season 2: Episode 4: Max Gruver
And a big thing we've been doing is that we've made a high school education program. Steve and I tell Max's story and then a local Phi Delta Theta chapter talk about the realities of, you know, hazing. And it's really been effective.
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Death in the Dorms Season 2: Episode 4: Max Gruver
What really got us to form this relationship was just speaking with Sean Wagner. Sean is the head of the Phi Delta Thetas. He knows that they failed miserably at LSU, and he's got passion. That relationship's been instrumental in just amplifying our voice.
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Death in the Dorms Season 2: Episode 4: Max Gruver
Max started applying to colleges and, you know, we were talking about schools and he definitely wanted to go to, you know, a big school like an ACC or an SEC school because of the sports. LSU. It was the first school he heard back from with an acceptance. And him and Steve went to go see the school. And let me tell you, they did everything right there at LSU.
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Death in the Dorms Season 2: Episode 4: Max Gruver
And we've gotten some change in the state of Georgia as well. We have a Max Gruver Act that requires reporting with respect to hazing in every university.
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Death in the Dorms Season 2: Episode 4: Max Gruver
You know, if we can change one kid's mind, then we've done enough. what we want to do for Max. We miss you, big guy. And we hope we're making you proud. Nobody survived
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Death in the Dorms Season 2: Episode 4: Max Gruver
And, you know, after that, he came home that Saturday and walked in my house with his LSU, you know, Tiger Bound sign in his hand that they took on the plane. And I was like, oh, my gosh, he's not he's going to go there. That's I can tell that's where he wants to go.
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Death in the Dorms Season 2: Episode 4: Max Gruver
Over the summer before Max went to school, he started talking a little bit about fraternities.
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Death in the Dorms Season 2: Episode 4: Max Gruver
Max went through Rush right after he got dropped off at school. They have like a week of Rush before school starts.
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Death in the Dorms Season 2: Episode 4: Max Gruver
Phi Delta Theta was at the top of his list, and he really, really liked Phi Delta Theta because it was a smaller fraternity on campus, and I think Max liked that. And he really liked the guys in his pledge class.
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Death in the Dorms Season 2: Episode 4: Max Gruver
I went online and did some research on Phi Delta Theta, and I landed on a page that, this is for parents, parents, you're going to love your son's decision to join Phi Delta Theta. We have zero tolerance for hazing. And I saw that and I was like, wow, Max has really made some great decisions with his fraternity.
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Death in the Dorms Season 2: Episode 4: Max Gruver
Max kept talking a lot about leadership. I remember him telling us he had been up for pledge class president at the time, and he just really thought he could do a lot of things within the fraternity, and I was excited for him. He was happy. I felt that every single day, that Max, he's doing his thing. On September 14th, I was at work.
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Death in the Dorms Season 2: Episode 4: Max Gruver
I worked at a doctor's office, and all of a sudden, my phone rang. And we were getting up to go to lunch. It was noon. And I looked at the phone, and it said Baton Rouge across it. And it was a man on the phone, and he was a nurse from the hospital. And he said, you know, is this Mrs. Groover? Are you Max Groover's mom? And I said, yes. And he's like, your son was just brought in.
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Death in the Dorms Season 2: Episode 4: Max Gruver
He was found unconscious. Some of his friends found him, and they brought him into the hospital.
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Death in the Dorms Season 2: Episode 4: Max Gruver
I got a phone call from Raeann. She just kept saying, something's wrong with Max. Something's wrong with Max. I remember telling everybody at work, hey, I gotta go. I gotta go. And I just remember, you know, looking at the sky and praying to God that Max is okay. When I get home, I'll learn everything's fine, Max is okay. You know, please, God, Max is okay.
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Death in the Dorms Season 2: Episode 4: Max Gruver
I was probably at my house, like, trying to figure out, like, what do I, I'm going to have to go to Louisiana, what do I take? And then they called again, and... The nurse, he said, Mrs. Groover, we did everything we could do. We worked on Max for 45 minutes, but he didn't make it.
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Death in the Dorms Season 2: Episode 4: Max Gruver
I yelled, I screamed. It was awful, just awful. Lily and Alex were still at school and we had to get them home. They learned just like I did when they walked in the front door. in the foyer, it's a terrible, terrible day.
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Death in the Dorms Season 2: Episode 4: Max Gruver
It was Max's time. Max was going to go spread his wings. College was really going to be his time.
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Death in the Dorms Season 2: Episode 4: Max Gruver
We knew that Max had passed away, and we needed to get to Baton Rouge as soon as possible.