A 22-year-old white student at the University of Kentucky was arrested after she was caught on camera hurling racial slurs and physically attacking two Black students.
Sophia Rosing, a student at the Lexington-based university, was arrested shortly before 4am on Sunday after campus police were called to the campus residence of Boyd Hall about a verbal and physical altercation taking place.
Video footage from the brazen attack began circulating online throughout Sunday, showing the allegedly inebriated 22-year-old use a racial slur against the Black woman who was working at the dormitories front desk on Sunday morning before she attempted to strike her.
“Could you stop?” asks the victim, in a video that was captioned with, “what I had to deal with at work”.
The student was working an overnight shift at the campus residence, university President Eli Capilouto told students in an email Sunday, NBC News reported, and the video was shared shortly after the arrest and quickly went viral.
“Nope,” Ms Rosing responds after being asked to stop by the Black student who she was attacking. “You’re a n***** and you’re a b****,” said Ms Rosing, a racial slur she would repeat to use several times throughout the short video clip.
“I do not get paid enough for this,” says the victim, as she attempts to fight off the 22-year-old’s attempts to strike her. Ms Rosing then proceeds to repeatedly call her the racial slur.
Off camera, a person recording the video confirms to the group that, “I got this all on video.”
Ms Rosing can then be seen being helped into a chair by two unidentified women before she begins to try and punch a second person as she tries to kick at the first woman she was attacking.
A white male police officer can then be seen entering the frame where he is seen putting Ms Rosing in handcuffs as she continues to repeat the racial slur.
According to WKYT, Ms Rosing was booked at the Fayette County Detention Center and has been charged with alcohol intoxication in a public place, disorderly conduct, fourth-degree assault and third-degree assault of a police officer. Her bond was set at $10,000 and country records from Fayette County Detention Center did not indicate whether the 22-year-old’s bail had been paid.
In a follow-up TikTok video shared by the victim seen on camera, who identifies herself as Kylah Spring, she explained how she had initially tried to help the young woman who came stumbling into the university’s dormitory hall in the early hours of Sunday morning.
Ms Spring says in the video that she had called the building’s resident assistant for help, but before they’d arrived, Ms Rosing had allegedly used the “n-word and b-word multiple times”, punched her twice and kicked her.
“The girl starts saying things like ‘do my chores,’ ‘it’s not my fault that you’re Black,’ ‘it’s not my fault that you’re ugly,’ and at this point she’s like singing the n-word,” Ms Spring alleges in the video.
The university issued a statement on social media the following afternoon after the video had been circulating and gaining traction online for several hours, acknowledging that the contents of the clip was “deeply offensive” and would be taken “very seriously”.
“An arrest has been made. We are conducting an immediate review and have reached out to the student victim to offer support,” the university’s president said in a statement, noting that the victim in the attack had acted, in his view of the incident, “with professionalism, restraint and discretion.”
“To be clear: we condemn this behavior and will not tolerate it under any circumstance. The safety and well-being of our community has been — and will continue to be — our top priority,” the statement read, noting that the criminal investigation into the student is ongoing and the Office of Student Conduct would also be “conducting an immediate review”.
In the follow-up TikTok video, Ms Spring also alleges that the arrested student also attempted to bite and strike one of the arresting police officers at the scene, leading to her assault to an officer charge.
The Independent has reached out to the University of Kentucky for additional comment on the case but did not hear back immediately.
