For me the worst part of this thread are the posters who comment about how this frees up a scholarship for us. Really??
From everything everyone has said here this is a good kid, looking to escape the chaos and hardship of his homeland and he was involved in what could be or not a serious situation. Looking at the charges they sound a lot more serious then they could be in reality. In fact some of them sound like complete bull.
The fact that 12 hours passed from the time of the incident before an arrest warrant was issued is telling.
I'm not a lawyer but this sounds to me that it wasn't of a nature where the police responded to a violent scene but that someone went in the morning to file a complaint with the police. I have two brothers who are retired law enforcement and over charging is extremely common.
For example:
Under the New Jersey Terroristic Threat statute, a person is guilty of the crime of terroristic threats if he or she threatens to commit a crime of violence with the purpose to terrorize another.
Some guy bumps into you at a bar spilling your beer. You say "Hey buddy I'm going to kick your ass." Terroristic threat
Theft by unlawful taking:
This is the most common type of theft charge in New Jersey because the taking of someone’s movable property without their permission.
"Give me that cellphone or I'll kick your ass" Theft by unlawful taking plus terroristic threat.
As much as I have personal admiration for most law enforcement a lot of this sounds like bull***t.
So if a girlfriend thing. They have a fight. It gets heated. He says he is going to" kick her ass" or says "I'm going to kill you if you don't...". She uses her phone to tape it. He grabs her arm and takes the phone to erase the recording.
All the charges could be as simple as this.
Not excusing the behavior but the charges sound much worse than this one scenario. And I'd bet it is closer to this than the image portrayed by just reading the charges.