The first three Salisbury University students charged in an attack on a man they allegedly lured to an off-campus apartment using a dating app are set to stand trial this week.

Dylan Pietuszka, 20, Logan Clark, 20, and Sean Antone, 19, are among the 15 Salisbury students who in early November were taken into custody in connection with the attack and charged with hate crimes.

All three men standing trial this week are only facing two charges: second degree assault and false imprisonment, which are both misdemeanors.

Both Antone, of West Friendship, and Clark, of Severna Park, face bench trials Thursday morning in Wicomico District Court. They were initially charged with first-degree assault, reckless endangerment, false imprisonment and hate crime charges.

Dylan Pietuszka, 20, of Friendship, has a trial beginning on Friday. Pietuszka had most of the 53 charges against him thrown out last month.

None of the three men’s lawyers responded to requests for comment. None of their lawyers have so far signaled to the Wicomico County State’s Attorneys office that they will plead guilty, according to Scott Cook, a public information officer in the office.

All three trials are expected to conclude the same day they start, Cook said.

Bench trials for nine other students, all facing the same two misdemeanor charges, are scheduled for the coming week.

The remaining three students requested jury trials. Zachary Leinemann, 18, and Elijah Johnson, 19, who are both from Crofton, are charged with second-degree assault and false imprisonment, as well as a third misdemeanor of harassing a person based on their sexual orientation. Their trials are scheduled for April. Eric Sinclair, 21, of Mount Airy, is only facing the initial two misdemeanor charges, and his jury trial is not yet scheduled.

Police said the incident, which was caught on video and shared on TikTok, began when Salisbury students used Grindr, a dating app primarily used by gay men, and Snapchat, to lure the victim to an apartment. Police said they posed as a 16 year-old interested in sexual relations with the 40-year-old man.

In Maryland, the age of consent is generally 16 years old.

The now-deleted TikTok video has circulated elsewhere online, showing a group of young men hitting an older man with various items and their fists, surrounding him while he is seated in a chair.

“You’re not going anywhere,” one of the aggressors says as several men surround and grab the victim, pulling him to the ground. As he attempts to get up, the video shows, his attackers repeatedly punch, slap and kick him.

The young men repeatedly call the older man a slur used against gay men, as well as a “threat to society.”

Salisbury University President Carolyn Ringer Lepre announced the arrests in an email to the campus community.

An LGBTQ+ faculty group planned a campus vigil the Monday after the arrests, and a couple hundred people showed up to honor the victim, who sustained a broken rib in the attack.

The university also formed an LGBTQ+ Task Force to “co-create meaningful support systems, resources and solutions both within the university and the broader Salisbury community,” according to Zebadiah Hall, the university’s vice president of inclusion.

The Princeton Review ranks Salisbury the 20th-most unfriendly college to the LGBTQ+ community in the country.

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