Two California men are facing charges after racial slurs were found scribbled inside of a residence hall on the University of Maryland’s campus in April 2023, according to campus police.
Hayden Drew Pritchard, 22, and Sergio Pimentel Delgado, 21, were both charged Feb. 8 with trespassing. Pritchard was also charged with racially-biased property damage, according to a Tuesday news release from campus police.
It doesn’t appear the men are students at the university. The university told WTOP that it has no students with the names and birth dates of the suspects.
Both men admitted entering the dorm without permission and Delgado said he wasn’t there to visit anyone, according to charging documents.
Surveillance footage shows the pair were able to get into the dormitory by following a group of students in at around 1:45 a.m. on April 29, 2023, according to charging documents.
Around 20 minutes after entering the building, Pritchard and Delgado left campus and took an Uber to the area of the Marine Barracks at 8th and I streets in Southeast, D.C., according to charging documents.
Police were called to La Plata Hall at around 9:15 a.m., when resident life staff found racial slurs targeted at Black people written on a mirror in the hallway and on a name plate on the eighth floor, charging documents said.
Officers returned to the dormitory that same day, at around 1:41 p.m., after additional racial slurs were found written on walls on the eighth and ninth floor.
The account connected to that Uber ride helped lead investigators to identify the men, according to charging documents. Police said they reviewed video footage and followed up on leads to identify Pritchard and Delgado during the investigation.
A criminal summons was issued the same day the two men were charged.
“I do remember this one time we were obviously super intoxicated from coming back from the club and being stupid probably punched a couple of signs,” Pritchard told investigators at the University of Maryland on Feb. 6, according to charging documents.
When asked if he wrote on the walls, Pritchard said: “I don’t doubt that I probably did. I get stupid but I don’t remember doing that.”
He did remember picking up a marker (which went missing from a white board on the eighth floor), according to charging documents. He’s later seen throwing it away on surveillance footage.
A student newspaper, called The Diamondback, reported that 60% of hate bias incidents in the school’s dorms across the last four years were racially motivated, referencing the university’s Bias Incident Support Services dashboard.
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