Edan On, an eighteen-year-old man, was detained in Beverly Hills by the UCLA Police Department on May 25, for his alleged participation in the attack on the UCLA Palestine solidarity encampment.
On was booked on suspicion of felony assault with a deadly weapon and transported to the Men’s Central Jail in Downtown Los Angeles where his bail was set at $30,000 bail, according to the LASD Inmate Information Center.
His first court appearance is set for May 28, at the Los Angeles Superior Court Airport Courthouse near LAX. Details on the criminal case were not yet available in the Los Angeles Superior Court’s records as of press time.
On is the first person to be arrested in connection with the April 30 attack on Pro-Palestinian protesters at UCLA. According to a statement from volunteer medics at the encampment, protesters were attacked with bear mace, pepper spray, metal pipes and wooden planks and around 25 were transported to local emergency rooms.
Last week, CNN published an investigation identifying On as an assailant in the attack and including images and videos of him striking people and objects with a pole.
The investigation also stated that On was a student at Beverly Hills High School. BHUSD Superintendent Michael Bregy said the district is unable to confirm his enrollment due to the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act.
The student’s mother told CNN that her son went to UCLA on May 30 and that he plans to join the Israel Defense Forces. The mother later reversed course and told CNN that her son was not at the encampment attack.
In since-deleted Facebook posts, she bragged about her son’s role in the attack.
She said he “went to bully the Palestinian students in the tents at UCLA and played the song that they played to the Nukhba terrorists in prison!,” in a message posted in Hebrew.
“He is all over the news channels,” she wrote in another post.
The attack on the encampment began around 11 p.m. on April 30 in the presence of UCPD officers and hired private security. LAPD did not arrive on scene until 1 a.m. and took around two hours to break up the violence.
The UCLA administration and police department received widespread condemnation for their failure to intervene in the attack. In the aftermath of the violence, UCLA launched two investigations: one into internal security failures and a second into the perpetrators of the attack.
On May 22, UCLA Police Chief John Thomas was removed from his post and temporarily reassigned while the investigation into campus security’s shortfalls continues.
In a statement on May 23, UCLA Chancellor Gene Block confirmed that both investigations were ongoing.
“Accountability is critical to our ability to move forward,’ he stated.
“We have initiated necessary reviews of our security operations and have created a new Office of Campus Safety reporting directly to me. That office, in partnership with the LAPD, is continuing criminal investigations into those who perpetrated violence on our campus, including members of a mob who on April 30 attacked the encampment on Royce Quad.”
