Student enters plea in drinking fatality case

Saturday, October 1st 2005, 1:11 pm

By: News On 6

NORMAN, Okla. (AP) _ A year after University of Oklahoma student Blake Hammontree died of alcohol poisoning at a fraternity party, another student pleaded no contest to giving him alcohol.

John Abbott Frame, 21, of Norman was given a three-year deferred sentence on Friday and was ordered to pay $2,500 into an alcohol education fund at the university.

District Judge Bill Hetherington also ordered Frame to perform 100 hours of community service and pay court costs in the felony case.

Frame pleaded no contest to furnishing liquor to Hammontree, a Sigma Chi pledge, the night Hammontree overdosed on alcohol. Hammontree's body was found Sept. 30, 2004.

Frame was one of five students charged with alcohol-related crimes after the death. Three other students have entered pleas to charges of furnishing alcohol to minors other than Hammontree.

The case of Jordan Scott Mitchell, 20, of Sand Springs, is pending. He is also charged with furnishing alcohol to a minor, a felony.

Hammontree's death sparked a number of changes at OU regarding student alcohol consumption.

The Sigma Chi fraternity, which hosted the party Hammontree attended, was closed by the university.

OU President David Boren ordered an alcohol ban at campus housing and at off-campus fraternity houses. The policy went into effect in January.

The school has also instituted penalties for students who violate the alcohol policy. Students who violate the policy three times will be suspended. Each violation merits a strike, and a third strike automatically results in a one-semester suspension for a student. Strikes also apply to student organizations.

The university has issued more than 80 individual strikes and one organizational strike since the policy went into effect.