Jewish students injured in heinous attack by bottle-wielding assailant wearing Palestinian scarf on Pitt campus

Two Jewish students were attacked on the University of Pittsburgh campus late Friday by a man wearing a Palestinian scarf and wielding a bottle. 

Campus police arrested Jarrett Buba, 52, in the assault, the Pittsburgh Post Gazette reported. University officials said he had no known affiliation with the school.

Buba, who lives in the Oakland neighborhood where the school is located and was wearing a keffiyeh, the checkered scarf associated with Palestinians, had been sitting at a table across a main street from where the students were walking on the final day of the first week of classes.

The students, who were both wearing yarmulkes, told cops they made eye contact with Buba but kept walking.

He then ran across the street and attacked them from behind about 6 p.m., the criminal complaint said, according to the Post Gazette. 

They fought back, bringing Buba to the ground while they waited for campus cops to arrive.

Surveillance footage backs up the students’ account, the report said. The students, who were not named, were injured in the “appalling” attack, which occurred near the university’s famed Cathedral of Learning, according to a university statement released Friday.

The police report said one of the students had cuts on his face and the other was bleeding from cuts on his neck, the Post Gazette said. One was taken to a local hospital and later released.

“While there is not believed to be any ongoing threat to the public stemming from this incident, we recognize that incidents like these are unsettling to our Pitt community,” the statement read.

The area where the attack took place was the scene of pro-Palestinian protests during spring semester calling for the university to divest from Israel in response to the war in Gaza.

Buba was hit with two counts of aggravated assault, resisting arrest and harassment, among other charges, the Post Gazette reported. Agents from the FBI’s Pittsburgh field office are looking at the attack as a possible hate crime

Pitt leaders reached out to the Hillel University Center and Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh in the wake of the attack, which took place less than two miles from the Tree of Life Synagogue, where in 2018, mass shooter Robert Bowers killed 11 in the deadliest antisemitic attack in US history.

Counseling services were made available to the university community, and officials said there was no threat to the public. 

“To be clear: Neither acts of violence nor antisemitism will be tolerated,” the statement read. “Local and federal partners are supporting Pitt Police in this ongoing investigation.”