Three SUNY Albany students who said that they were targeted due to their race while on a bus last month, will face assault charges after police have cited evidence which suggest they were the instigators, New York Daily News reports. Burwell, a 2013 graduate of Walt Whitman High School in South Huntington, and two other African-American women, say they were beaten and called racial epithets by 10 to 12 white students as they all rode a Capital District Transportation Authority bus January 30, 2016. The assault charge carries a maximum penalty of 1-year in prison.
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But UAlbany police announced Thursday that the three women are actually the ones charged with assault, because they pummeled a 19-year-old woman from Congers, NY.
Investigators say a review of multiple videos of the incident showed no evidence the women were victims of a crime or subjected to racial slurs. “Rather, we allege that they are the perpetrators”.
The three African American women, Ariel Agudio, Alexis Briggs, and Asha Burwell, all 20, will be charged with third-degree assault and with falsely reporting an incident.
In the immediate aftermath of the incident, rallies were held using the #DefendBlackGirlsUAlbany hashtag at which Burwell spoke publicly, stating,”We are proud of who we are”. “I am very grateful for the good work of the investigation team and for the assistance we received from our partners in law enforcement”, he said.
The story took off on social media when Burwell, a junior from Long Island and student manager of the women’s basketball team, tweeted “I just got jumped on a bus while people hit us and called us the “n” word and NO ONE helped us”.
All three students will face charges of assault in the third degree and falsely reporting an incident in the third degree, according to the police statement, with Agudio facing additional charges of attempted assault in the third degree and attempted criminal mischief in the fourth degree.
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It wasn’t immediately known if they each have lawyers to comment. “The evidence indicates they were actually the aggressors… and that they continued to assault the victim despite the efforts of several passengers to stop them”.
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One of the students in the alleged incident emotionally spoke out at the rally for the first time. In fact, the source said it was one of the girls who used a racial slur against another passenger.
