A disturbing video posted on YouTube three days ago about an incident which occurred at the Red Lion Bar in Champaign, Illinois has now been viewed over 30,000 times. The video shows a young woman lying unconscious on the pavement outside of the bar; she appears to have a head injury and University of Illinois Police officers are attempting to take her pulse.
The incident, which occurred within blocks of numerous University buildings and residence halls, has also garnered a lot of attention on The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign subreddit page, which has over 65,000 users. Some students are calling for the U of I to investigate, and for criminal charges to be brought against one or more Red Lion employees who may have been involved.
University of Illinois Police Chief Alice Cary and Champaign Police Interim Chief Thomas Petrilli spoke about the incident this evening at a Champaign County Community Coalition meeting, though the subject was not on the meeting agenda.
Chief Cary had just finished giving her U of I Police updates, which began with a declaration that there were “no related issues” in regards to “Unofficial [St. Patrick’s Day] Weekend”.
Before Cary could leave the podium, a member of the audience asked about the Red Lion incident. Jobie Taylor, who works for the Champaign County Housing Authority, was concerned by the YouTube video and wanted to know how the incident was being handled.
Cary said that University of Illinois Officers were first to respond, but she was quick to hand the microphone over to Interim Chief Petrilli since the incident “was reported to Champaign [Police]”.
Petrilli said that the “story grew legs” and that “something blew it out of proportion”. He said “it was a rather minor incident” and that the injury to the woman “was nothing serious”. He said the woman was treated and released from the hospital.
Petrilli did refer to the young woman as a “victim”, suggesting there may be criminal charges planned, but he did not elaborate further. Neither Police Chief attempted to explain what sequence of events resulted in the victim being injured and unconscious outside of the bar.
The Red Lion has at least two security cameras that appear to cover the incident location. There are also security cameras on the buildings to the east and to the north of the Red Lion. Thus far, Check CU is not aware of any video having been obtained or reviewed by law enforcement.
Check CU has sent Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests to both the City of Champaign and the University of Illinois seeking records and video related to the incident.
Check CU published a new article on this topic on March 25, 2022:
The same thing happened to my son , when he wanted to go back to retrieve his phone.