Kidnapping and conspiracy charges are dropped against college students in ‘Catch a Predator’ fad

Kelsy Brainard appears district court as she and four other Massachusetts college students made their first appearance on conspiracy and kidnapping charges in Worcester, Mass, Thursday, Jan. 16, 2025. (AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty)

A judge has dismissed conspiracy and kidnapping charges against five Massachusetts college students who were 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 social media.

The Assumption University students, all teenagers, were arraigned in January and entered not guilty pleas. Since then, their lawyers had filed motions seeking to dismiss the charges, saying authorities lacked probable cause to believe they committed crimes.

Following a hearing last month, a Worcester District Court judge on Tuesday dismissed the conspiracy and kidnapping charges against Kelsy Brainard, Easton Randall, Kevin Carroll, Isabella Trudeau and Joaquin Smith. It wasn’t immediately known if charges were still pending against a sixth student, whose case was being handled in juvenile court.

Police say Brainard’s Tinder account was used to lure the man to the private, Roman Catholic university in Worcester last October and that the encounter was caught on video.

Brainard still faces a charge of witness intimidation and Carroll faces a charge of assault and battery with a dangerous weapon.

“We are grateful that the court, after a fair hearing and due consideration, applied the law properly,” Brainard’s lawyer, Christopher Todd, said in an email Wednesday. “No decisions have been made about our path to resolution of the remaining count.”

A message seeking comment was emailed Wednesday to Carroll’s lawyer.

The Assumption University Police Department “fulfilled its duty as an accredited law enforcement agency by filing charges describing the facts of the incident and the elements of a crime under Massachusetts law,” university spokesperson Matt McDermott said in an email Wednesday. “The district attorney accepted and prosecuted those charges. All of the charges in the case, including those that remain in place, are within the purview of the judicial system to resolve.”

The district attorney office’s rules of professional conduct preclude it from commenting, “as there are still pending cases in this matter,” spokesperson Lindsay Corcoran said in an email.

A report filed by campus police said a 22-year-old active-duty military service member connected with a woman on Tinder in October and was invited inside a basement lounge. 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 girls, the police report said.

Todd’s motion to dismiss said the video does not show anyone making an active effort to restrain the man and that Brainard stays on the couch in the lounge after he leaves. He said it was insufficient evidence to show “that she was willing to assist in this `kidnapping.‘” Todd also said there was no evidence of a plan to hold the man against his will.

Todd said a review of the conversation on the Tinder app shows the woman says she is 17, soon to turn 18. The man says “that’s fine, you’re in college.”

Randall had told officers they were inspired by the “catch a predator” trend, which he said “is big on TikTok.” 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.

After the assault, Brainard reported the man to police as a sexual predator, police said, which they determined to be false.

Kathy Mccormack, The Associated Press