The Hillsborough County State Attorney’s office filed criminal charges against the three men accused of disrupting a student prayer gathering at a University of South Florida parking garage in Tampa. Richard Penkoski, Christopher Svochak, and Ricardo Yepez are each charged with disturbing a religious assembly and disorderly conduct. The State Attorney’s office said the defendants were charged under Florida Statute 871.01, which makes it a crime to willfully interrupt or disturb any assembly of people gathered for the worship of God. They were also charged with disorderly conduct. These charges are misdemeanors.
The Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC) strongly condemned what they said was a “hate-fueled, Islamophobic harassment that Muslim students at the University of South Florida (USF) endured while they were peacefully praying.” According to the USF Police Department, the men confronted students during their early morning Fajr prayer on the rooftop of a campus parking garage.
The students described a terrifying scene: the men shouted slurs about their religion, mocked their sacred ritual with a cardboard “Kaaba 2.0 – Jesus is Lord” box, spat near worshippers, and waved bacon, a food explicitly forbidden in Islam, immediately after the prayer. According to the Muslim Public Affairs Council, USFPD filed felony hate-crime charges (“disturbing schools and religious assemblies”) along with misdemeanors, and USF issued trespass orders to bar the individuals from returning to campus…