Five Massachusetts college students are facing criminal charges after allegedly luring a soldier to their school's campus to ambush him in a TikTok trend inspired by "To Catch a Predator."
The five were among a larger group of nearly 30 students that chased the unwitting man from a building at Assumption University after he was invited there by a student on the dating app Tinder on Oct. 1, according to a criminal complaint written by campus police and filed in Worcester District Court on Dec. 4.
According to the complaint, there was no indication that the victim intended to meet anyone underage. The woman who invited him to campus, 18-year-old Kelsy Brainard, indicated her age on her dating app profile, police said.
Minutes before the confrontation, police said, footage showed that the victim was watching a baseball game in the student lounge with Brainard and there was "ample personal space between them," according to video of the episode shared among students and seen by police.
Regardless, the group of students allegedly framed the 22-year-old man and confronted him in the student lounge as part of a "deliberately staged event," WCVB reported.
The students appeared from hidden locations with their phones at the ready, recording as they berated the man as "a sexual offender," grabbed him and blocked him from leaving the lounge. When he escaped, 25 people gave chase.
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One student, not named in court documents because he is a minor, allegedly punched the victim in the back of the head. Once the victim reached his car, another student slammed his head into his car door. It is unclear whether the man was injured in the incident.
"A few minutes later, you see the group coming back in, laughing and high-fiving with each other," police wrote in the complaint.
The victim's father told WCVB that his son is currently serving in the Army and was deployed overseas days after the attack.
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Easton Randall, 19, told police that he and his peers were inspired by the popular NBC series "To Catch a Predator," which featured the show's host Chris Hansen confronting men lured to a house where they thought they were meeting minors for sex before handing those men over to waiting police.
Randall said the group was cashing in on a TikTok fad modeled after the show, in which people lure a sexual predator to a location to assault them, expose them or turn them over to police.
Randall, Brainard, 18-year-old Isabella Trudeau and 18-year-old Joaquin Smith face charges of kidnapping and conspiracy, WCVB reported. Brainard was additionally charged with intimidation; 18-year-old Kevin Carroll, who allegedly slammed the victim's head into the car door, is accused of assault and battery with a deadly weapon.
A lawyer listed for Carroll did not immediately respond to a request for comment, and attorneys for the other students were not listed on the court docket. The other four defendants could not be reached for comment. The students are scheduled to appear in court on Jan. 16.
Assumption University President Greg Weiner said that the incident was "abhorrent and antithetical to Assumption University's mission and values" in a statement and said that the school's Department of Public Safety immediately launched an investigation after the alleged attack.
"This situation is particularly sobering because the victim is an active-duty military service member," Weiner wrote. "His service reminds us of the sacrifices made by those who defend our freedoms, including the opportunity to pursue a college education."
