New Plea Entered in Wiesel Attack

SAN FRANCISCO — A New Jersey man accused of stalking Holocaust scholar Elie Wiesel and dragging him off a hotel elevator has changed his plea back to not guilty by reason of insanity, prosecutors said Thursday.

Eric Hunt entered the new plea to charges of attempted kidnapping, false imprisonment, battery, stalking and elder abuse.

If convicted of all the felony charges, Hunt could face seven years in prison and a $10,000 fine, prosecutors said.

Hunt, 23, of Vernon, N.J., has been jailed in a psychiatric unit since his February arrest. He dropped his original insanity plea and simply pleaded not guilty this summer.

His attorney has described his client as mentally ill and not anti-Semitic.

Trial has been scheduled for March.

Wiesel, who chronicled his experiences as a Jewish teenager at two Nazi death camps in the book "Night," told authorities a young man at the Argent Hotel asked him for an interview, then dragged him off an elevator Feb. 1. The assailant fled after Wiesel began to scream.

(This version corrects that Hunt was in court.)

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