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Wounded Vet Group Leader After Drunken Abuse By Fraternity: 'Do Not Take Justice Into Your Own Hands'

By Dom Giordano

PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- Linda Cope, founder of the Warrior Beach Retreat spoke with Talk Radio 1210 WPHT midday host Dom Giordano about the recent incident in Panama City where many of the wounded veterans in her group were abused by drunken members of the Zeta Beta Tau fraternity. She called for patience and faith in the justice system.

"We as a nation need to let the fraternity do their due diligence and let this run its course because I was told today that a fraternity gentleman from another college had hot tar sprayed on him and he is in the hospital. Now that is unacceptable. We as a nation need to trust our system of government to deal with this. They're dealing with this in a very positive way. They are getting to the bottom of it and we do not—I encourage everyone in this nation not to take justice in to their own hands, but know that the fraternity involved is being very serious about this and we need to let them with their investigators do justice to what happened and they are."

Cope does not feel that just because the fraternity members were drunk that it should be an excuse for their actions.

"They were just drunk and as anybody knows when you're drunk, people think that there's an excuse to get away with stuff and my hope through all of this media storm is that all of us, especially fraternities and sororities across the nation, will realize that with every action there is a reaction and there is no excuse because you had too much to drink."

According to Cope, they arrived with so much flair showing that they were wounded veterans (flags, signs, posters, hats and t-shirts) that if and when the students were sober they would have been able to know who they were.

She remains very proud of her members for showing the kind of restraint necessary in such a situation.

"I am very proud of them because as anybody knows that when you have PTSD (Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder) and TBI (Traumatic Brain Injury) you have to have a lot of restraint for what was happening, and they used it, because they didn't want to bring dishonor to Warrior Beach Retreat."

More information on the Warrior Beach Retreat can be found at warriorbeachretreat.org.

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