BELLEFONTE — Eighteen Penn State students and their fraternity were charged Friday in one of the largest hazing prosecutions in the nation’s history.

Eight of the students face involuntary manslaughter charges in connection with the death of 19-year-old Tim Piazza, who suffered fatal injuries when he fell down a set of stairs during a Beta Theta Pi fraternity pledge party earlier this year.

Centre County District Attorney Stacy Parks Miller announced the sweeping case at a news conference in Bellefonte. Flanked by Piazza’s parents and a portrait of the sophomore, she accused fraternity members of putting Piazza through a dangerous booze-fueled hazing ritual and failing to call for help once he had injured himself.

“It’s heart-breaking all around,” she said. “There are no winners here.”

With his arm wrapped around his wife, Piazza’s father, Jim, choked back tears. “This did not have to happen,” he said.

The charges unveiled Friday were the result of a monthslong grand jury investigation. The panel’s blistering presentment described a ritual known as “the gauntlet” in which pledges were required to stop at various alcohol stations, where they guzzled vodka, shotgunned beers, drank from wine bags and played multiple rounds of beer pong.

One fraternity member told the grand jury that pledges drank four to five alcoholic beverages within a two-minute time span.

Those charged with misdemeanor counts of involuntary manslaughter included Brendan Young, president of the Beta Theta Pi chapter at Penn State, as well as fellow fraternity members Daniel Casey, Jonah Neuman, Nick Kubera, Michael Bonatucci, Gary Dibileo, Luke Visser and Joe Sala. Each also faces felony charges of aggravated assault that could result in prison terms if they are convicted.

In addition, 10 other student members of the Beta Theta Pi fraternity face lesser charges including hazing and furnishing alcohol to minors.

Piazza, an engineering major from Lebanon, N.J., was intoxicated at the Feb. 2 pledge party when he fell multiple times and was knocked unconscious, the district attorney said.

Members of the fraternity moved him to a couch but did not call for emergency help until the next morning, about 12 hours later. Piazza died the next day at Hershey Medical Center, having suffered a non-recoverable head injury, ruptured spleen and collapsed lung.

Defense attorneys for the students have said previously that fraternity members did not know Piazza was in danger but rather thought he was just drunk and would sleep it off.

But Parks Miller lambasted that argument Friday, saying that video taken from the fraternity house’s extensive security system disproved those claims.

The charges were announced hours before Penn State’s board of trustees were scheduled to meet and as commencement festivities were getting underway at the 46,000-student University Park campus.

The university, having conducted its own investigation, permanently banned Beta Theta Pi earlier this spring, citing evidence of forced drinking, hazing and other illegal activity. The university also instituted new rules for the rest of its 83 fraternities and sororities, whose members represent about 18 percent of the student body.