A Worcester District Court judge will drop the last charge against Kelsy Brainard, one of the five Assumption University students accused of carrying out a TikTok-inspired plot, if she does not commit a crime in the next year, the Boston Globe reported.
After a judge previously dropped the conspiracy and kidnapping charges last month, Brainard, 18, of Holyoke, was still charged with lying to a police officer, the Globe wrote. Following an agreement with Worcester County District Attorney Joseph Early Jr.’s office, the charge will be dismissed if she is not arrested in the next year.
Brainard’s lawyer Christopher Todd argued in court that his client had been punished enough for her actions and wanted to continue her life past this incident, the newspaper wrote.
“It’s been a monumental learning experience for a young woman,” Todd told the judge.
He added that Brainard has received threats and police have patroled her neighborhood for her safety, as well as lost her job while enrolled at Assumption. While she and the other students are no longer at Assumption, Brainard is now enrolled in a different college and works at a law firm, Todd said.
“This was a very unfortunate incident in which she went along with a crowd when she shouldn’t have,” Todd said, the Globe wrote.
Todd also suggested that Brainard’s comments to police on the night of the incident were because of the “aggressive” way campus police interrogated her, the Globe reported.
Brainard was not the first of the Assumption students charged in connection with this incident to have her criminal charges dropped. In April, the court closed the cases against Easton Randall, Isabella Trudeau and Joaquin Smith as a result of the dismissal, according to court records.
A fifth student, Kevin Carroll, remains charged with assault and battery with a dangerous weapon. A sixth student who is under 18 was also charged.
The students were accused of luring a man to Assumption’s campus on Oct. 1, 2024, with the promise of a hook-up, similar to the setup of the TV show “To Catch a Predator.” Inspired by a TikTok trend where a supposed predator is lured to a location and subsequently arrested while on camera, the students accused a man of being a pedophile, assaulted him and chased him off campus, prosecutors previously said.
During a police interview, Brainard reiterated what she told other staff at the university, that a “creepy guy” was on campus to meet a 17-year-old, according to court documents. Officers attempted to locate the “predator” but couldn’t find anyone.
Assumption police later received a report from police in Worcester that they were aiding an 18-year-old man who reported being in contact with Brainard on Tinder and making plans to hook up on campus. He said he was then chased by 25 people up a flight of stairs to his car, where he was assaulted and had his car door slammed on him. He fled the campus and called the police.
As he tried to run, his path was blocked by a group of men, then as he ran up the stairs toward his car the man was hit in the head from behind, police said in a report.
Police reviewed Tinder messages between Brainard and the man, which showed no indication he was looking for underage girls to meet. Brainard represented herself as 18 years old on the app.
Randall told police that videos from the TV show, “To Catch a Predator,” are big on TikTok but that this “got out of hand,” court documents stated.
