Auburn University fraternity brother remembers night of assault

By Katie Stallcup

Published: July 30, 2008

Brett Villeneau remembers the night three years ago when a man stabbed five of his fraternity brothers during a pre-Iron Bowl party.

Some of it he saw, and some of it he caught up on later.

“We were up here hanging out… nothing wild,” said Villeneau, now a senior studying economics and political science. “Everyone was doing their own thing, since there was a lot of parties, you know, the night before the Iron Bowl.”

The way Villeneau understands it, a man tried to get in to a party at the fraternity across the street, but he was turned away. He went over to the Phi Kappa Tau house and started yelling, he said.

“This guy was apparently going off—‘Roll Tide’ this, this and that. ‘Ya’ll are going down,’” Villeneau said.

One of his pledge brothers asked the man to leave, and the man hit him, he said. The man ran a short distance, then talked with another fraternity member. Then, the man threw the fraternity brother into a car coming up the street.

“That sounds a lot worse than it was,” Villeneau said. “…It definitely was not traveling very fast.”

When another person stopped to check on the fraternity member in the street, the man stabbed him in the back, Villeneau said. A crowd of people started chasing the man, and they wound up on the rugby field down the street, he said.

“That’s where I witnessed it… I saw people going down,” Villeneau said. “… I saw… a big guy with his shirt off. He was swinging at people, and they were kind of, like, falling. I mean, he was a big guy—I’m sure he could hit pretty hard—but it seemed kind of unusual. By the time I got up there, there were people sitting there, applying pressure. It dawned on me after a while that people had actually gotten stabbed, not just gotten hit.”

Ambulances came, treated people and transported some to the hospital. A couple people had serious injuries, but no one suffered lasting damage, he said.

Now, the man charged with the assault, Joey Michael Barrett, 25, of the Mobile area, is awaiting a second trial after a Lee County judge declared a mistrial in 2006.

Villaneau said he’d like to see the issue resolved, especially after three years of waiting.

“Obviously, because they’re my fraternity brothers, I want something to be done,” Villeneau said. “But I think under any circumstances, I’d want something done.”