Alamance County “Circle of Death” hazing incident
An Alamance County family is speaking out after their 14-year-old son was forced into a hazing game called “The Circle of Death” at Southern Alamance High School on December 3, 2024.
The incident has sparked outrage, especially after it was revealed that the coach involved, Jim Giannotti, is a former Alamance County sheriff’s deputy. The hazing occurred after Colby Eplee, the victim, was involved in a verbal altercation with Giannotti’s son, Carson.
Three of the four wrestling coaches involved in the incident have connections to law enforcement, raising further concerns. Along with Giannotti’s recent resignation from the Alamance County Sheriff’s Office, Jeff Ellis works with Haw River Police, and Caleb Harmons is with Burlington Police. The fourth coach, Josh Ahlgren, is not a police officer.
All coaches were handpicked by Giannotti.
Jessica Eplee, Colby’s mother, who spoke exclusively to The North Carolina Beat, said the day began like any other. Colby attended wrestling practice after school, while Jessica went grocery shopping with her granddaughter. When she returned to her car, she found multiple missed calls, including one from her husband, Matt.
Matt told Jessica that Giannotti had called to inform him that Colby had “banged heads” with another student during practice and may have suffered a concussion.
Upon picking Colby up from the school, Jessica said she immediately noticed something was wrong. Colby appeared dazed, confused, and unresponsive, which prompted her to drive him to the hospital.
At Alamance Regional Medical Center, Colby was examined by a doctor, who asked if his behavior was typical. Jessica reported that Colby was not speaking and appeared disoriented. Colby later explained to his parents that he did not know how he injured his head, claiming he had wrestled multiple people during practice.
Jessica said parents began reaching out and she asked them if they could ask their kids what happened. One parent revealed that Colby had been forced into “The Circle Of Death,” a brutal wrestling game in which Colby had to wrestle the entire team or face being kicked off the squad. The confrontation between Colby and Carson had escalated to the point where Giannotti allegedly told Colby to either quit the team or participate in the hazing.
Jessica said the story was that Carson had come up behind another teammate named Brian and slammed him. She said Colby mentioned, “Brian didn’t do anything to him; he just walked up.” So, Colby and Carson started going back and forth, with Carson asking Colby if he went to Fargo last year, to which Colby replied, “Do you know why you’re on varsity? Because your daddy is a coach.”
She said Carson left the gym to find his dad. In a meeting with Giannatti and in front of the administration, Jessica said he admitted that he “went off on a tangent.” Jessica also mentioned that Giannatti went inside the gym and started talking about how his son earned his spot on the team.
“HE WENT OFF ON A TANGENT ABOUT HOW CARSON HAD WORKED FOR HIS SPOT ON THE TEAM AND HOW BEING THE COACH HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH IT. IN MY SON’S REPORT, HE SAID GIANNATTI STARTED POINTING AT SPECIFIC TEAMMATES, ASKING, ‘CAN YOU BEAT CARSON?’” Jessica said.
Jessica said she has no bad feelings toward any of the kids because, just like her child, they didn’t think they had a choice.
“I’M NOT MAD AT THE CHILDREN THAT PARTICIPATED IN THIS,” JESSICA SAID.
“THEY WERE DOING WHAT THEY WERE INSTRUCTED TO DO. SOME PEOPLE ARE SAYING THE KIDS NEED TO BE CHARGED, AND NO, THEY DON’T. THEY’RE KIDS. JUST LIKE MY CHILD DIDN’T KNOW HE HAD THE RIGHT TO SAY, ‘I DON’T WANT TO DO THIS’ AND CALL HIS PARENTS, THEY DIDN’T KNOW THAT EITHER. NOT ONLY WERE THESE MEN COACHES, BUT THEY ARE ALL LAW ENFORCEMENT.”
In “The Circle Of Death,” Colby was placed in the middle of the wrestling mat, surrounded by his teammates. He was required to wrestle each member, starting with the heaviest wrestler and progressing down to the lightest.
“In the circle of death, Colby gets in the middle, and the entire team circles him, starting with the heaviest weight and moving to the lowest. Jessica recalled, ‘Colby weighed in that night at 168.'”
Before it started, Jessica said Giannotti announced that he had pneumonia and that he usually starts and finishes the circle of death. However, because he was sick, he let Assistant Coach Harmon, also known as Officer Harmon and employed with the Burlington Police Department, start it off.
“Colby thought he was off the team because he believed he didn’t finish wrestling everyone, but he actually did,” Jessica said.
Jessica said there were about 26 players there that night. She also mentioned that her son was not required to wear protective headgear during the session. At some point, Jessica said Officer/Assistant Coach Colby Harmon wrestled her son.
She said that Colby had to wrestle each player for 30 seconds, and when switching between going to A and B, players A and B would wrestle him for 15 seconds, making it a 2v1.
‘”we were told that he was exhausted, and they were slamming him left and right. He would give out, and he told me that he was put in a spladdle,’ Jessica said.”
Jessica said that when it came to Carson, she mentioned that her son is 6’2″–6’3″ tall, and that Carson is much shorter. She doesn’t believe they banged heads because they weren’t at head level.
“We were told that while wrestling Carson, he slammed his [Colby’s] head up against a concrete wall,” Jessica recounted. “And he had blood on his head.”
After it was over, Jessica said everyone was told to get water, but her son doesn’t remember any of it. She said that all he could recall was that his head hurt really badly and that his neck was hurting.
“He said he went and sat on a cart used for the mats, and his head was just really hurting, and he was tired,” an emotional Jessica recalled. “So, he laid his head down and went to sleep… but he didn’t go to sleep, he ended up unconscious, and they didn’t tell us any of this.”
Another kid, who is close friends with Colby, told Jessica that while he was getting water, he noticed Colby lying on the mat and went over to try to wake him up but couldn’t get Colby to respond.
“He said he was saying his name and shaking him, and Colby wasn’t saying anything. So, he punched him in the foot and yelled his name, and that’s when Colby’s eyes opened and he started gasping for air,” Jessica recalled.
Jessica said the kid called for the coaches, and one of them came over. When the coach looked into Colby’s eyes, they were “bouncing around his head like a marble.” Outraged, Jessica said she couldn’t believe that no one thought to call for medical attention at that point.
“You can’t tell me that if you found a child in that condition, you wouldn’t call 911, but we didn’t know any of this,” Jessica said. “So, while we’re at the hospital, and they asked me what happened, I said he banged his head and didn’t know of any loss of consciousness because we found this out after the fact.”
While at the hospital, Matt relieved his wife, and she went home with their other kids since she had been with Colby all day. On her way home, Matt called Giannatti and said they needed to talk. Jessica said Giannatti asked about what, which they thought was comical because he hadn’t told them that he had put their child in the “circle of death.”
She said Matt confronted Giannatti about the holes in his story, and Giannatti told him that his son bumped heads with a player but didn’t mention that he wrestled the whole team. Jessica said that at that point, Giannatti claimed he was disciplining their son, asserting that Colby bullied a girl—something all the teammates have disputed—and that Carson was the reason.
Jessica said that throughout the phone call, Giannatti kept claiming he was trying to set an example, stating that Colby went through it, did it, and that they were going to move on. The two ended the call, stating they would talk later because he was heading home with Colby.
When Matt and Jessica were finally able to settle in, Jessica decided she wanted to speak with Giannatti herself about what happened. Matt and Giannatti had been friends for quite some time, which is why everything felt so strange to them regarding this incident.
In a text message shared with us, on December 5, Matt reached out to Giannatti, with Jessica included in the text, so they could set up a time to discuss the incident from December 3.
Responding back, Giannatti said, “Sure, as far as I’m concerned, everything is fine, no issues. I just left the pulmonary doctor and am trying to clear up this pneumonia. My plan hasn’t changed for Colby. I plan on wrestling him Varsity next Saturday if he’s cleared.”
Jessica responded to Giannatti, expressing that they were more concerned about Colby’s health, what happened, and ways to prevent such an incident from happening in the future, rather than focusing on what spot he wrestles. However, Giannatti had a legitimate family emergency and couldn’t meet.
Jessica recalled, “We just didn’t know what happened, the full extent of everything, or even that our son had lost consciousness. So, I wanted to meet to understand what happened. He wanted to reschedule the meeting for the following Monday, and he wanted Stephanie Smith, the Athletic Director, to be part of the meeting.”
Jessica thought that if Stephanie was pulled into the meeting, the school administration should also be involved. So, the following Monday, Dec. 9, the meeting took place, which included Jessica, her husband Matt, Giannatti, Stephanie Smith, the assistant principal Paul Kuczkowski, and Todd Davis, the Athletic Director for the entire Alamance-Burlington School System.
“Some of the things Giannatti said in front of them were insane to me,” Jessica said. “The comment he made, ‘You’ll be proud of Colby because he fought the whole time,’ he said that in that meeting, and it pissed me off so bad. I said, ‘Yeah, because he would have died to stay on that team.’ I don’t know how he thought that sounded good.”
Jessica stated that Giannatti admitted his actions were wrong, and the school was mortified. They kept wanting to refer to it as “the incident,” but she was livid and refused to call it that.
“No, I told them to call it what he called it to those kids, ‘the Circle of Death,'” Jessica told The North Carolina Beat. “Let’s let everybody in the whole world hear that and see if they want to send their kids into the Circle of Death.”
After the meeting, Jessica said she received a phone call from Assistant Principal Kuczkowski, who informed her that Giannatti had resigned as head coach. She also learned that Ellis and Harmon had resigned, and she had a feeling that Ahlgren would also resign, but they were all told they could no longer coach at the school.
Jessica said Sheriff Terry Johnson of the Alamance County Sheriff’s Office had assigned the internal investigation to Detective Randy Denham. She also mentioned that Johnson told her that if they found any potential criminal activity, they would have to call the SBI because they wouldn’t be able to investigate it themselves.
“TWO HOURS AFTER WE LEFT THE INITIAL INTERVIEW WITH TERRY JOHNSON’S DEPARTMENT, WE GOT THE CALL THAT THE SBI HAD BEEN CALLED IN,” JESSICA SAID. “MARYANN ROWLEY, SHE WAS THE SBI OFFICER ASSIGNED TO US, AND FROM EVERYTHING I CAN TELL, SHE’S BEEN GREAT.”
Jessica said she contacted Rowley after the Haw River Police Department never reached out to her regarding Jeff Ellis’s involvement in the hazing of her child. She explained that Ellis went to work the next morning after the “circle of death.”
“HE WAS TELLING SOMEONE WHAT HAD HAPPENED AND THAT A ‘KID HAD GOT DISCIPLINED, AND THESE WERE THE CONSEQUENCES OF HIS ACTIONS, AND HE’S FAKING A HEAD INJURY, AND THAT’S WHY I DIDN’T CHECK ON HIM, BECAUSE HE’S FAKING,’ ADMITTING HE DIDN’T CHECK ON A CHILD.”
Jessica said witnesses told her and Matt that, during this time, no adult checked on their child. She mentioned that Colby had a headache from that night that lasted for about a month, but 10 days after the hazing, Colby was referred to a neurologist.
“WHEN HE DID HIS EYE TEST, HE COULD MOVE HIS EYE TO THE RIGHT AND HE WAS FINE, BUT WHEN HE TRIED TO LOOK TO THE LEFT, HE LOST CONTROL, WHICH CAME FROM HIS BRAIN INJURY,” JESSICA SAID.
Ultimately, the doctor decided that Colby needed to be put on medication to help speed up the healing of his brain and alleviate his headaches. Jessica said her son’s headaches were so severe that they would wake him up at night.
“THE HEADACHES WERE SO BAD THEY WERE WAKING HIM UP AT NIGHT, AND HE’S NEVER HAD HEADACHES, NEVER HAD ANYTHING LIKE THAT,” JESSICA SAID. “OUR WORRY IS THAT THE LONG-TERM EFFECT OF TRAUMATIC BRAIN INJURY WILL AFFECT HIM WHEN HE’S 40. YOU NEVER KNOW WHAT’S GOING TO COME OF IT UNTIL LATER ON.”
Jessica said that a little after her birthday in January, Colby was initially cleared to return to practice and exercise as long as it didn’t cause him pain. However, he couldn’t have contact with anyone.
According to Jessica, she was told that charges could not be filed under the hazing statute because it did not include coaches or staff. However, a criminal defense attorney we spoke to informed us that there are several charges the coaches could face, such as:
Assault Resulting in Serious Personal Injury: This offense involves intentionally causing substantial harm, such as a significant risk of death or prolonged hospitalization.
Assault on a Student: North Carolina law prohibits any intentional act by school personnel that causes physical harm to a student.
Child Abuse: Engaging in conduct that inflicts physical injury or creates a substantial risk of such injury to a minor may constitute child abuse under state law.
Willful Failure to Discharge Duties: As public officials, the coaches may be charged if they willfully omitted or neglected their official duties, leading to harm.
Conspiracy: If the coaches collectively planned and executed the hazing activity, they could be charged with conspiracy to commit the aforementioned offenses.
The North Carolina Beat has reached out to all of the officers/coaches’ employers for comment, but so far, we have received no response.
Usual suspects.
Disgusting attempt at a racist comment on the post of dead child from the usual suspect.
Good for you mom for standing up for your son! That punished her son for coming after HIS son. Using his power, like he said he faced the consequences but the consequences came from arguing with his son. I hope her son recover fully