A Secret Service agent based in South Florida was arrested Sunday on charges that he took part in paddling a new fraternity member so severely that the student suffered kidney damage and nearly died, according to court records.
The agent, Marquez Pinder, 29, was booked into a Miami jail on felony charges of hazing, attempted manslaughter and aggravated battery with a deadly weapon, jail records show. Prosecutors have charged two other men with the same counts; neither are Secret Service agents.
According to an arrest warrant reviewed by The New York Times, investigators identified the victim as a University of Miami law student and the fraternity involved as Kappa Alpha Psi, which officially prohibits hazing.
The Secret Service put Mr. Pinder on leave about a month ago, his defense lawyer, Justin Beckham, said on Sunday evening. Mr. Beckham declined to discuss details of the case but said it was “grossly overcharged.”
“He has served his country honorably, first in the military and then the Secret Service,” Mr. Beckham said. “We look forward to fighting these charges.”
The beatings happened on four occasions at off-campus apartments in April, and the victim suffered severe kidney damage, according to the warrant. He had attended the University of Miami as an undergraduate and became interested in joining the fraternity’s chapter; he officially joined in February and was a member of a local alumni chapter because he is in graduate school, the warrant said.
A second victim had similar injuries, the warrant said.In a statement on Sunday night, Michael Townsend, special agent in charge of the Secret Service’s Miami office, said the agency was cooperating with local investigators on the case. He said the agency “remains committed to accountability, professionalism, and integrity, and any misconduct will be addressed swiftly and appropriately upon completion of the investigative and judicial process.”
The arrest is another embarrassing episode involving agents at an agency that has also been criticized for security lapses amid a drain in personnel.
Two months ago, an off-duty Secret Service agent was arrested on a charge of indecent exposure after the police in Miami said he had masturbated in a hotel hallway. He has pleaded not guilty, court records show. In March, an agent accidentally shot himself in the leg at Philadelphia International Airport. Also that month, a Secret Service officer was arrested on allegations that he sent sexually explicit material to a young girl.
The prosecution of Mr. Pinder and the other two men also serves to highlight the persistent problem of the college hazing culture in Florida and across the nation.
This year, for instance, three fraternity members at an Arizona university were charged in connection with the hazing death of an 18-year-old undergraduate student. And this month, Ohio State University announced a fraternity chapter had its status revoked after a student was hospitalized during a hazing episode.
To address widespread hazing, President Joseph R. Biden Jr. in December 2024 signed into law a bipartisan bill requiring universities to report such episodes annually and to introduce student education programs.
Mr. Pinder was charged under a Florida law that has made hazing a felony if it results in serious injury or death, even if the victim consents. The law was passed in 2005 after a University of Miami freshman drowned during a hazing episode. The law was expanded in 2019 after the drinking death of a Florida State University student.
In the law’s most high-profile test, more than a dozen members of a marching band were charged in the 2011 beating death of Robert Champion at Florida A&M University in Tallahassee. Most received probation or were ordered to perform community service; the purported ringleader was sentenced to more than six years in prison.
“In Florida, hazing is abuse and it is a crime,” Katherine Fernandez Rundle, the state attorney for Miami-Dade County, said in a statement on Sunday evening. “Its victims too often lie in their graves and in hospital beds.”
In the case involving the Secret Service agent, the two victims were each made to sit in a half squat with one arm pointed forward, and they were repeatedly struck with paddles if they incorrectly answered questions about the fraternity and its history, according to the warrant.
The beatings stopped on the final day only after one of the victims bled through his underwear and pants, according to the warrant. The fraternity members “became upset” and ordered the two victims to dispose of their clothes in a garbage bag and go home, the document said.
But the health of the law student began to falter: He experienced vomiting, fevers and intense pain on his buttocks, which required surgeons to perform extensive skin grafts to repair. According to the warrant, the student suffered acute kidney damage and would have died had he not sought emergency care.
Detectives found that the other victim, a Miami-Dade Fire-Rescue employee, had been treated for similar injuries and was intubated during an emergency hospital stay. That man admitted to investigators that he had been in the apartments but denied having been paddled, according to the warrant.
As evidence, detectives obtained text messages, surveillance footage showing the fraternity members at one of the apartment complexes, and photos of paddles wrapped in electric tape, the words “kaboom” and “kapow” written on them.
