Secret Service agent and two others arrested for ‘prolonged’ hazing in Miami

A Secret Service officer is seen near the Walter E Washington convention center ahead of the Nato Summit. Photograph: Beata Zawrzel/NurPhoto via Getty Images View image in fullscreen A Secret Service officer is seen near the Walter E Washington convention center ahead of the Nato Summit. Photograph: Beata Zawrzel/NurPhoto via Getty Images Secret Service agent and two others arrested for ‘prolonged’ hazing in Miami Three men were arrested for ‘repeated beatings with canes and paddles’ causing near-fatal injuries to two pledges A US Secret Service agent and two others have been arrested after Florida state investigators uncovered evidence of “alleged hazing incidents involving prolonged and repeated beatings with canes and paddles” in Miami. Investigators arrested Marquez Christopher Pinder, 29, on Sunday. Two other men – Jared Lamar James, 26, and Elijah Delano Dyous, 29 – were also arrested for allegedly helping to orchestrate the beatings, purportedly as part of a fraternity hazing ritual in April that left two people hospitalized with severe injuries. Court documents said that a University of Miami graduate student and another young man had injuries that could have been fatal had they not been treated. One of the victims required skin grafts to his backside and suffered kidney damage, while the other had a tube placed in his windpipe to help him breathe. Charges against Pinder, James, and Dyous include felony counts of hazing with a deadly weapon, aggravated battery with great bodily harm and attempted manslaughter. “In Florida , hazing is abuse and it is a crime,” Katherine Fernandez Rundle, a Miami-Dade county state attorney, said in a statement. “It’s victims too often lie in their graves and in hospital beds.” According to the Miami Herald, the accused men conducted the beatings after the victims failed to correctly answer questions relating to initiation into the Miami chapter of Kappa Alpha Psi, a historically Black fraternity where Pinder served as a “dean of pledges”. Miami prosecutors said the alleged hazing began on 1 April at an apartment in the Sweetwater district close to Florida International University. However, the graduate student victim was not affiliated with FIU. The hazing allegedly continued for two days at the Sweetwater location before moving to another residence for a fourth day. The beatings stopped on the fourth night when one of the victims had blood seeping through the seat of his pants, according to a warrant in the case – and the fraternity leaders ordered the victims to strip off their clothes and place them in garbage bags. The warrant said that injuries to one of the alleged victims “would have resulted in renal failure leading to death” while the second denied being paddled – but acknowledged receiving emergency medical care. Medical records show he had been hospitalized with injuries to his backside and “was intubated during his stay in the hospital to prevent further physical deterioration and death”. Pinder