PITTSBURGH — A man has been charged with aggravated assault after an alleged attack with a glass bottle on two Jewish students on the University of Pittsburgh campus, a city newspaper reported Saturday.
According to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the 52-year-old suspect was also charged with simple assault, reckless endangerment, resisting arrest and harassment.
The Post-Gazette, citing a criminal complaint, said the man was seen on surveillance video sitting at a table across from the students as they walked near Pitt’s Cathedral of Learning Friday night. Police said he ran across the street and hit them from behind with the bottle.
The students, who were wearing traditional Jewish kippahs, were treated at the scene, the university said. One had cuts to his face and the other to his neck, the Post-Gazette reported, citing the criminal complaint.
The suspect, who has no known affiliation with the school, was wearing a keffiyeh, a traditional checkered scarf worn in the Middle East and increasingly used as a symbol of solidarity with the Palestinian people.
University officials were in contact with Hillel University Center as well as the Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh.
Agents from the FBI’s Pittsburgh field office were also dispatched to the scene to investigate the possibility of a hate crime, the newspaper said.
The university called the incident “appalling” but said there was no threat to the public. Counselling services were being made available.
“Let us be clear: neither acts of violence nor anti-Semitism will be tolerated,” the university said in a statement.
Court documents do not list an attorney for the suspect, and no phone number could be found Saturday.
The incident occurred at the end of the first full week of classes in the fall semester and a few months after spring campus protests against the Gaza war, one of which took place outside the Cathedral of Learning.
