A U.S. Secret Service agent and two other men were arrested and charged with violent crimes in the Miami area, where authorities say they committed brutal beatings as part of a fraternity hazing ritual in April that left two people hospitalized with serious injuries.

One of the men charged, Marquez Christopher Pinder, 29, works at the Secret Service field office in Miami and is described in an arrest warrant as “dean of pledges” for a Miami chapter of the Kappa Alpha Psi fraternity.

The Secret Service said it is cooperating with investigators and has placed Pinder on administrative leave. He was released after posting $75,000 bail on Monday and faces an arraignment before a judge on September 24.

The three men were charged last week after police discovered evidence of “alleged hazing incidents involving prolonged and repeated beatings with canes and paddles,” the Miami-Dade County state’s attorney’s office said in a news release.

Police said in court documents that a University of Miami graduate student and another young man suffered injuries that could have been fatal if they had not been treated. One required skin grafts to his butt and suffered kidney damage, according to the documents, while the other had a tube placed in his windpipe to help him breathe.

Charges against the three men include felony hazing with a deadly weapon, aggravated assault causing great bodily harm, and attempted manslaughter.

“In Florida, hazing is an abuse and a crime,” Miami-Dade County State’s Attorney Katherine Fernández Rundle said in a statement Sunday. “Their victims too often lie in their graves and in hospital beds.”

An attorney for Pinder, Justin Beckham, did not immediately return phone messages and emails seeking comment Monday. Court and jail records did not list attorneys for the other two men.

Pinder has worked as a Secret Service agent since 2023, agency spokesman Matt Fagiana confirmed Monday.

“Any misconduct will be addressed quickly and appropriately upon completion of the investigative and judicial process,” Michael Townsend, special agent in charge of the Secret Service’s Miami field office, said in a statement.

A spokesperson for Kappa Alpha Psi did not immediately respond to a telephone message left at the fraternity’s headquarters in Philadelphia.

According to Pinder’s arrest warrant, the graduate student told police that Pinder and the other defendants beat his and another young man’s butts over four nights in early April at an off-campus apartment and house. The beating began when the victims did not correctly answer questions about the fraternity and its history, a police investigator said in an arrest warrant filed in court.

The order does not name any of the victims.

The beatings stopped on the fourth night when one of the victims had blood oozing through the bottom of his pants, according to the warrant. He said fraternity leaders ordered both victims to remove their clothes and place them in trash bags before returning home.

One of the victims suffered vomiting, fever and severe pain before being admitted to a hospital, where he required skin grafts to his buttocks and treatment for kidney damage, according to police.

Without emergency medical treatment, the order said, “his injuries would have led to kidney failure that would have caused his death.”

The second victim told police he knew the other victim from the fraternity. He denied being beaten, according to the warrant, but acknowledged receiving emergency medical care in April.

That person’s medical records showed he had been hospitalized with injuries to his butt and “was intubated during his hospital stay to prevent further physical deterioration and death,” the arrest warrant said.

In 2005, Florida lawmakers made hazing a felony punishable by up to five years in prison if it results in serious injury or death. The law was prompted by the 2001 death of Chad Meredith, a University of Miami freshman who drowned after drinking alcohol and then attempting to swim across a lake at the urging of campus fraternity leaders.

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Bynum reported from Savannah, Georgia.