College students appear in court in case stemming from ‘Catch a Predator’ fad on TikTok

WORCESTER, Mass. (AP) — Five Massachusetts college students appeared in court Thursday, accused of plotting to lure a man to their campus through a dating app and then seizing him as part of a “Catch a Predator” trend on TikTok.

The Assumption University students, all teenagers, were arraigned on conspiracy and kidnapping charges. Not-guilty pleas were entered for all of them, and they are due back in Worcester District Court on March 28 for a pre-trial conference.

The defendants — Kelsy Brainard, 18; Easton Randall, 19; Kevin Carroll, 18; Isabella Trudeau, 18; and Joaquin Smith, 18 — stood stone-faced in court, showing little emotion and addressing a judge only through attorneys. A sixth defendant was being arraigned separately in juvenile court.

Police said Brainard's Tinder account was used to lure the man to the private, Roman Catholic school in Worcester. She faces an additional charge of witness intimidation. A male student in the group also faces a charge of assault and battery with a dangerous weapon.

The target — a 22-year-old active-duty military service member — told police he was in town for his grandmother’s funeral in October and “just wanted to be around people that were happy,” according to a campus police report. So he turned to Tinder, where a woman whose profile said she was 18 invited him over.

She greeted him, led him into a basement lounge, and then within minutes, "a group of people came out of nowhere and started calling him a pedophile,” accusing him of wanting sex with 17-year-old girls, according to the report.

The man told police that he broke free and was chased by at least 25 people to his car, where he was punched in the head and his car door was slammed on him before he managed to flee.

Campus surveillance video shows a large group of students, including the woman, “all with their cellphones out in what seems to be a recording of the whole episode,” the police statement said. They are seen “laughing and high fiving with each other” in what appeared to be “a deliberately staged event,” and there was no evidence to indicate the man was seeking sexual relations with underage girls, the police report said.

Randall told officers they were inspired by the “catch a predator” trend, which he said “is big on TikTok” at the moment. He said their group shared ideas of what to tell the man through the Tinder app to lure him to campus, and then spread word through a dormitory chat group that a “predator” was in the building, the report said.

A review of the messages showed no indication that the man was looking for underage girls, police said.

After the assault, Brainard reported the man to police as a sexual predator and said she was frightened by him. She said he had come to campus uninvited and that she texted a male friend who chased him away. All of this was false, campus police concluded after reviewing surveillance recordings and finding that “first person perspective videos” were being circulated among students.

Before leaving court, where cameras were turned on them, the teens were ordered to have no contact with the targeted man.

A lawyer for Brainard, Christopher Todd, said, “We’re just looking forward to having the process play out.” The lawyer for Trudeau, Robert Iacovelli, said afterward that she's innocent. He filed a motion seeking dismissal of the charges against her, saying authorities lack probable cause to believe she committed a crime.

Other attorneys were not immediately reached for comment about their pleas.

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Whittle reported from Portland, Maine.