JOHNSON CITY, Tenn. – A Washington County judge on Monday authorized additional charges against a student who allegedly donned an ape mask and dangled bananas at students during a Black Lives Matter protest in September.

Former East Tennessee State University student Tristan Rettke, 18, was charged with a civil rights violation after he attended a Sept. 28 Black Lives Matter protest at ETSU’s “free speech zone” in Borchuck Plaza while wearing an ape mask and carrying bananas tied to a rope. Rettke also allegedly displayed a burlap sack emblazoned with the Confederate flag to provoke the protestors, WCYB reports.

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At Rettke’s preliminary hearing in Washington County General Sessions Court on Monday, Assistant District Attorney Will Monk asked Judge Robert Lincoln to add two more charges against the student: disorderly conduct and inciting a riot, according to the Johnson City Press.

Three students testified at the Monday hearing, including student Thomas Madison, who was not attending the rally but stopped to record the altercation on his phone and stream it live to Facebook.

In the video, Madison asked Rettke what he was doing in the gorilla mask, and the 18-year-old replied that he was supporting the protestors.

“He said, ‘I identify as a gorilla,’” Madison said. “I took that as a reference to me being black. And I took him wearing a mask at a Black Lives Matter protest … the fact that black people historically been called monkeys.”

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Madison told the court he considered Rettke’s bananas “a very serious threat,” the Press reports.

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“When you come offer me a banana this close to my face, it’s calling me a monkey, and I’m not a monkey,” he said.

Other students said Rettke wrapped a rope around the banana and pulled it tight to cut it into slices, which they likened to the country’s ugly history of black lynchings.

“I seen a student in a mask, holding a rope and asking people, ‘Do you want bananas?’ and holding up a sack that had a Southern flag,” Jeremiah Pearson, a student who helped organize the event, told the court.

Pearson said he repeatedly quested Rettke about his purpose for the stunt, and Rettke replied “I’m doing what you’re doing.”

Pearson also likened the banana and rope trick to Rettke “snapping someone’s neck.”

“I never felt that type of fear in my life,” Pearson said.

Rettke left the school days after the incident, and school officials condemned his actions. His attorney told WCYB afterwards that the student regretted his actions, but asserted they are protected by his constitutional right to freedom of speech.

Judge Lincoln ultimately determined prosecutors presented enough evidence to send the case to a grand jury with the additional charges, and his case could proceed to criminal court in 2017 if he’s indicted.