Secret Service agent charged with felonies in beatings police say were fraternity hazing

A U.S. Secret Service agent and two other men have been arrested and charged with violent felonies in the Miami area, where authorities say they committed brutal beatings as part of a fraternity hazing ritual in April that left two people hospitalized with severe injuries.

One of the men charged, 29-year-old Marquez Christopher Pinder, works in the Secret Service’s Miami field office and is described in an arrest warrant as a “dean of pledges” for a Miami chapter of the Kappa Alpha Psi fraternity.

The Secret Service said it’s cooperating with investigators and has placed Pinder on administrative leave. He was released from jail after posting a $75,000 bond Monday and faces arraignment before a judge Sept. 24.

The three men were charged last week after police uncovered evidence of “alleged hazing incidents involving prolonged and repeated beatings with canes and paddles,” the Miami-Dade County state attorney’s office said in a news release.

Police said in court documents that a University of Miami graduate student and another young man had injuries that could have been fatal had they not been treated. One required skin grafts to his backside and suffered kidney damage, the documents said, while the other had a tube placed in his windpipe to help him breathe.

Accused agent has worked for Secret Service since 2023

Charges against the three men 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, state attorney for Miami-Dade County, said in a statement Sunday. “Its victims too often lie in their graves and in hospital beds.”

An attorney for Pinder, Justin Beckham, did not immediately return phone and email messages seeking comment Monday. Court and jail records did not list attorneys for the other two men.

Pinder has worked as a Secret Service agent since 2023, agency spokesman Matt Fagiana confirmed Monday.

“Any misconduct will be addressed swiftly and appropriately upon completion of the investigative and judicial process,” Michael Townsend, the special agent in charge of the Secret Service’s Miami field office, said in a statement.

A spokesman for Kappa Alpha Psi did not immediately return a phone message left at the fraternity’s Philadelphia headquarters.

Arrest warrant describes bloody paddling, emergency medical care

According to Pinder’s arrest warrant, the graduate student told police that he and another young man had their backsides beaten by Pinder and the other defendants during four nights in early April at an apartment and a home off-campus. The paddling started when the victims failed to correctly answer questions about the fraternity and its history, a police investigator said in an arrest warrant filed in court.

The warrant did not name either victim.

The beatings stopped on the fourth night when one of the victims had blood seeping through the seat of his pants, according to the warrant. It said fraternity leaders ordered both victims to strip off their clothes and place them in garbage bags before going home.

One of the victims suffered vomiting, fevers and intense pain before being admitted to a hospital, where he required skin grafts on his buttocks and treatment for kidney damage, according to police.

Without emergency medical treatment, the warrant said, “his injuries would have resulted in renal failure leading to death.”

The second victim told police he knew the other victim from the fraternity. He denied being paddled, the warrant said, but acknowledged receiving emergency medical care in April.

That person’s medical records showed 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,” the arrest warrant said.

Florida lawmakers in 2005 made hazing a felony punishable by up to five years in prison if it results in serious injury or death. The law was spurred by the 2001 death of Chad Meredith, a University of Miami freshman who drowned after drinking alcohol and then attempting to swim across a lake at the urging of campus fraternity leaders.

___

Bynum reported from Savannah, Georgia.