The NAACP is rallying around a Virginia high school track star at the center of a viral-video controversy and on the receiving end of criminal charges after she smashed a competitor in the head with a baton in the middle of a state-championship 4×200-meter relay race.
In videos that most observers find damning, Alaila Everett, a senior at I.C. Norcom High School in Portsmouth, is seen swinging her baton into the back of the head of Kaelen Tucker, a junior at Brookville High School. Reeling from the pain, Tucker grabs her head and staggers to the ground alongside the track at Liberty University in Lynchburg. Everett proceeds to awkwardly flail her baton-arm.
An attorney and former multi-sport, standout athlete who reviewed the footage for ZeroHedge said Everett’s follow-on motions look like theatrics meant to portray the head-blow as an accident, rather than an attack springing from a loss of impulse control as Tucker overtook her.
Everett and her squad were immediately disqualified from the championship competition, while Tucker was diagnosed with a concussion and possible skull fracture. In TV interviews after the incident, Everett admitted the act “looked purposeful,” but said the hammer-blow to Tucker’s head was an accident caused by the baton catching on Tucker’s clothing, which supposedly caused Everett to lose her balance. “I know my intentions, and I would never hit somebody on purpose.” Not satisfied to merely proclaim herself innocent, Everett also cast herself as a victim: “Everybody has feelings. So, you’re physically hurt, but you’re not thinking of my mental, right?”
Hellbound and Down 