"He kept saying 'take my money,' He wouldn't let go of my leg," Bargeil says. "I never called him any names."

The victim is deaf and so could not hear anything Bargeil said during the encounter.

Together, they fell down a couple of stairs outside St. Paul's Church, he says.

"If he'd just let go of my leg, I'd have walked away," he says.

Bargeil says he is angriest about how police are charging him with kicking the victim.

"How could've I kicked him if he was holding onto my leg?" he said.

The victim declined comment yesterday on the incident.

Zayed M. Yasin '02, president of the Harvard Islamic Society, also declined to discuss the specifics of the incident, citing privacy concerns.

Drifting

Growing up, Bargeil moved from group home to group home, never living anywhere or attending school in the same place for very long.

"I just sort of grew up everywhere," he says.

He dropped out of high school his sophomore year and began travelling.

He admits to a long list of misdemeanor arrests, although he says he has never committed a violent crime. He chalks the arrests up to the price of being homeless.

"It's all from surviving on the streets," Bargeil says.

On Jan. 23 of this year, he was released from a three-year prison term in Montana--where he had torn up a hotel room and stolen from a casino in Jordan, Montana.