Blair Hall at Princeton University in Princeton, New Jersey, 2006. (Alfred Hutter via Wikimedia Commons)
(JTA) — A Jewish Princeton senior and U.S. Army veteran accused of assaulting the school’s head of campus security during a pro-Palestinian protest last year has been found not guilty.
A New Jersey judge delivered the verdict Tuesday, the same day that Princeton’s president announced the school’s federal funding had been frozen by the Trump administration amid investigations into campus antisemitism.
Last April, David Piegaro, who self-describes as a “pro-Israel ‘citizen journalist,’” was attempting to film a sit-in on the campus when he had an altercation with Kenneth Strother Jr., the assistant vice president for public safety. Piegaro said he was not a part of the protests or counter-protests on Princeton’s campus, according to The New York Times.
Piegaro was attempting to follow Strother and two other people into a building adjacent to the sit-in when Strother blocked him from entry.
He proceeded to record the group and asked for Strother’s identity. In the recording of the incident, Piegaro says “don’t touch me” before the video cuts out, according to the Times.
Details over the ensuing altercation remain unclear. Strother asserted that Piegaro resisted arrest and Piegaro said he was the victim of assault, but the incident resulted in Piegaro falling down the steps of the building, where he was then arrested, according to the Times.
“The defendant, in my opinion, showed poor judgment in a tense moment, but it does not rise to the level of criminal recklessness,” said Judge John F. McCarthy III while issuing the verdict.
Following his arrest, Piegaro was barred from the campus for two weeks, a period during which he stayed with the director of Princeton’s Chabad House for a few days.
“In that environment, speaking specifically to the events of that day, when you have a whole host of public safety officers, administrators — I think doing their best — it’s not surprising that mistakes would get made,” Rabbi Eitan Webb told the Times.
Piegaro was arrested alongside 13 student protestors the day of the sit-in, making him one of 3,100 people arrested last spring surrounding pro-Palestinian protests on campuses across the country, according to the Times. The trials for the other students on trespassing charges are set for June.
Most recently, a number of international students have been detained or threatened to be deported by the Trump administration over their alleged involvement in pro Palestinian protests, including students at Tufts and Columbia Universities.
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