WORCESTER, Mass. — Five Assumption University students are facing charges after police say they lured a man to campus and assaulted him as part of a social media challenge.
According to court documents, Assumption Police say the group of students labeled the man a sexual predator without evidence and then enlisted the help of a “mob” of up to 30 students to chase and assault him while filming the incident, the Telegram & Gazette reports. The incident appears to be tied to a TikTok trend in which people try to catch pedophiles and sexual predators to expose them online, police say.
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One of the students charged, 19-year-old Easton Randall, told police that the planned confrontation was “like the Chris Hansen videos where you catch a predator and either call police or kick their ass,” noting the incident “got out of hand and went bad.”
“To Catch a Predator” ran from 2004 to 2008 and featured undercover police operations where men were lured through online chat rooms to a home where they thought they were meeting someone underage for sex. The host would confront the men before they were arrested.
The other students charged are Kevin Carroll, Isabella Trudeau, Kelsy Brainard, and Joaquin Smith, all 18.
Assumption Police: No Evidence Man Was Seeking Underage Sex
Assumption Police Sergeant Christopher Shea said Brainard corresponded with the man on Tinder and said he was a “creep” who thought he was meeting a 17-year-old girl. Shea said the Tinder profile identified Brainard as 18 and that the investigation turned up no evidence that the man was seeking underage sex.
Shea said Brainard and others involved made false statements minimizing what had occurred, and that their statements were contradicted by video surveillance. He also said that Brainard, when “confronted with the fact that the information she was providing was not factual, but falsification and lies,” acknowledged that to be the case.
Video evidence reportedly showed Brainard leading the man to a lounge area at Alumni Hall around 10:30 p.m. on Oct.1. She told police she felt uncomfortable but Shea said the video showed she was sitting a fair distance from the man and smiling. Shea said a group of men then emerged from “secreted” locations, grabbed the man and detained him while accusing him of being a predator.
The man was able to break free but a group of 25 to 30 students chased him and assaulted him, Shea said. Video surveillance shows others assaulting him when he got to his car, kicking him and slamming his head into the car door. Kevin Carroll, one of the charged students, allegedly confessed to police that he slammed the man’s head with the door. The alleged victim, who Assumption’s Department of Public Safety says is an active-duty military member, eventually managed to drive away and called the police.
“A few minutes later you see the group coming back in, laughing and high-fiving with each other,” Shea said.
All five students are facing kidnapping and conspiracy charges. Brainard is additionally charged with witness intimidation and Carroll is additionally charged with assault and battery with a dangerous weapon. The students are set to be arraigned on Jan. 16.
‘Predator Catches’ Ramp Up in Recent Years
According to a June 2024 article, USA TODAY found evidence of “predator catches” in about three-quarters of U.S. states in recent years. Xavier Von Erck, a founder of the group Perverted Justice that worked with Dateline NBC to produce “To Catch a Predator,” told USA TODAY that the main motivation behind today’s “self-governing” predator catchers has changed.
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“There seems to be more of a motivation nowadays to expose these guys to enhance an individual’s social media stature than there is to build an organization that can work with police and get arrests,” he said.
While predator catcher operations have been credited with arrests across the country, most do not lead to convictions. Robert Bloom, president of nonprofit Bikers Against Predators, which works with volunteers to set up operations across the country, says out of roughly 300 investigations conducted by the group, he estimated about one-third have led to successful court cases.
