Last Wednesday, Lynn Zingale received a call in Chicago to hurry to Columbia because her 18-year-old son, a pledge at Kappa Alpha fraternity, was undergoing treatment for alcohol poisoning at Boone Hospital Center.

�I begged her to tell me what was going on,� Zingale said in an interview with the Tribune. �She said, �It doesn�t look good. Get here ASAP.�

Within an hour she was on a plane. When Zingale arrived in Columbia, she learned her son was brought in with a blood alcohol concentration of 0.45 percent � the legal limit to drive is 0.08 � and a low blood oxygen reading.

Her son was in a medication-induced coma for two days to allow the alcohol to exit his system.

�They are shocked he survived,� Zingale said. �They are shocked he has no brain damage. This kid is a miracle, I don�t know how he is alive.�

The Tribune agreed to withhold her son�s name in exchange for an interview with Zingale. The incident is under investigation by the Columbia Police Department as an assault. MU and the national Kappa Alpha Order put the fraternity chapter on temporary suspension while the investigation is underway.

The university Office of Student Conduct also is investigating the incident. So far, Zingale said, she is pleased with the way MU has handled the incident but has harsh words for the Kappa Alpha order and its campus leadership.

Chapter President Jacob Lee picked her up from the airport and told her no active fraternity members were present when her son was drinking, she said.

She since has learned that was a lie, Zingale said. She also said she has learned that Lee ordered members and pledges not to communicate with her son. Before she left town, she said, she encountered Lee again.

�I told him he failed drastically as a leader,� Zingale said. �I told him, �what you are doing is massive damage control. You don�t care about my son, you are protecting the fraternity.� It is all about the good old boys club.�

Lee on Tuesday referred the Tribune to the national office, which said Monday that it was investigating the incident.

Jesse Lyons, Kappa Alpha Order assistant executive director for advancement, was not available to respond Tuesday to an email seeking comment on Zingale�s statements.

Lee wrote in a report provided to the Tribune by the pledge�s father, Mike Zingale, that the pledge became involved in a challenge to see who could chug the most vodka continuously.

Two fraternity members �explicitly told them that they did not have to take a drink if they did not want to,� Lee wrote.

Zingale�s son was drunk at 2 a.m. Wednesday and was put to bed. �For safety concerns, they put a backpack on� the pledge to ensure �that while he was sleeping he did not roll over on his back, vomit, and proceed to choke on his own vomit and auto-asphyxiate himself,� Lee wrote.

When Lee was called to check on the pledge at 10:30 a.m. Wednesday, he called 911 when the pledge would not wake up.

Zingale said she was told that if her son had been left alone for another hour, he would be dead or have severe brain damage. The hospital told her he had been in respiratory arrest and was inhaling three breaths per minute when paramedics arrived.

Underage drinking is prohibited by law and MU and fraternity policies. Mike Zingale demanded a copy of the fraternity�s alcohol protocols.

The fraternity rules prohibit hard alcohol in the house, require a security guard to be on duty late at night and for two regular members and a leadership member to be awake and sober as well.�There were so many violations it is not even funny,� he said. �We want the story out because we want to put as much pressure on them as possible.�

Her son is back in class, and whether he remains enrolled at MU will depend on the outcome of the investigation, Lynn Zingale said.

�We are deciding this on how this whole thing is being handled,� she said. �At this time we are just letting the school or the police do their job. If they find any guilt, we want them prosecuted.�

This story was first published online on Monday, October 3, 2016 at 5:06 p.m.