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Former Penn State Student Sentenced in Ethnic Intimidation Case

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A former Penn State student will spend time in jail after pleading guilty to ethnic intimidation and terroristic threats.

Nicholas Tavella, 20, of Greenburg was sentenced on Friday to 15 days to 23.5 months for ethnic intimidation, a third-degree felony. He received the same sentence, to be served concurrently, for terroristic threats, a first-degree misdemeanor.

Tavella pled guilty in October to the charges stemming from a December 2015 incident in which he followed, harassed and threatened another student because Tavella believed he was of Asian or Middle Eastern descent.

Police said the student was walking from Park Hill Apartments in downtown State College toward Nittany Apartments on the University Park campus when Tavella met him in the street and asked if the student was “going to rape a girl.” Tavella eventually grabbed the man by the collar of his shirt and said “don’t make me put a bullet in your chest.’

A stranger intervened and Tavella appeared intoxicated when police arrived at the scene at the intersection of Bigler and Hastings Road. According to the police report, Tavella admitted to racially profiling the student, who is of Indian descent.

Penn State Police said Tavella told officers that he “probably grabbed him” and “probably said something racist” but he didn’t remember everything because he was drinking before the incident. Tavella’s defense said the incident was ‘drunken stupidity’ and not motivated by hate but by love of country.

At a Dec. 9 hearing Magisterial District Judge Allen Sinclair bound over the misdemeanor charges but dismissed the felony charge saying the prosecution did not establish that ethnic intimidation had been committed. 

The charges were refiled by Penn State Police on Dec. 14 and in March Judge Thomas Kistler agreed with the D.A.’s office that Sinclair had committed ‘an error of law,’ as the alleged attack seemed to be motivated by the victim’s ethnicity. Kistler ordered a new preliminary hearing and the charges were then bound over.

Tavella also was sentenced to 90 days probation for summary harassment and ordered to pay fines for public drunkenness.