Two Columbia University janitors, Mario Torres and Lester Wilson, are suing pro-Hamas protestors and those who funded them for battery, assault, and conspiracy to violate their civil rights, stemming from an incident in 2024 when protestors stormed and took over Hamilton Hall on the University’s campus.
The two men say they have struggled with the aftermath of the violence and, according to the lawsuit, they have suffered physical injuries and post-traumatic stress disorder.
Neither Torres nor Wilson have been able to return to work.
The suit, filed on April 25, lists James Carlson, Aidan Parisi, Grant Miner, Catherine Curran-Groome, People’s Forum, Inc., Lisa Fithian, Gabriel Yancy, Ethan Choi and John Does as defendents.
The lawsuit was filed in federal court on Friday evening by Torridon Law and the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law on behalf of Columbia janitors Mario Torres and Lester Wilson. It alleges that over 40 Columbia students and “outside agitators,” some but not all of whom were arrested by police following the takeover of Columbia’s Hamilton Hall last April 29, “terrorized” both Torres and Wilson “into the early morning of April 30th, assaulted and battered them, held them against their will, and derided them as ‘Jew-lovers’ and ‘Zionists.’ ”
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“Mario and Lester are decent, honest, hardworking men who have been through hell. None of this ever should have happened,” said Tara Helfman, one of the Torridon lawyers on the case.
The lawsuit describes the protesters, the majority of whom “donned masks and hoods to conceal their identities,” as “reminiscent of the Ku Klux Klan.” It claims they “are part of a broad pro-Hamas, anti-Semitic network of organizations, groups, and cells that are connected through a largely untraceable underground communications system. They promote and resort to violent and illegal tactics, and are motivated by invidious discrimination against Jews and supporters of Jews.”
As The Gateway Pundit reported,Torres was photographed slamming 40-year-old trust fund kid James Carlson against the wall in Hamilton Hall while rabid leftists stormed and trashed the building.
Torres later told reporter Francesca Block that the protesters were organized and their occupation of the building was planned.
The janitors, who were trapped in the building while under siege by radicals, shared that they were gripped with “sheer terror,” and the violent mob was armed with zip ties and chains and carrying hand-drawn floor plans and supply lists.
NEW: Columbia janitors reveal chilling details of the Anti-Israel protest takeover of Hamilton Hall.
According to head custodian Henry Clemente, the rioters stormed in with hand-drawn floor plans and were prepared for a prolonged occupation.
“They mapped everything out. They… pic.twitter.com/nYuKVsdBJ3
— Hank
(@HANKonX) May 11, 2024
Henry Clemente, a head custodian for Columbia, told The New York Post, “If you have masked people running through the building with zip ties and chains, you don’t know what they’re going to do — if they’re going to take you hostage, if you’re going to be tortured, if you’re going to be made an example.
While Clemente and his crew were cleaning up the wreckage, they discovered handwritten secret plans that showed the takeover was anything but spontaneous. It was well planned.
In the days after masked protestors at Columbia stormed Hamilton Hall and trapped three janitors in the building, one of the janitors told me he thought: “I could have been killed in there.”
Now he’s suing the people who held him hostage — and those he says funded them. https://t.co/N6OUPkkBmC
— Frannie Block (@FrannieBlock) April 27, 2025
The post Columbia University Janitors ‘Held Hostage’ Sue Anti-Israel Protestors: ‘Reminiscent of the Ku Klux Klan’ appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.