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A shocking video posted online documents the moment a 20-year-old student was forced out of a classroom at a historically black university in handcuffs over an argument over an essay.
The video, posted to TikTok on Wednesday, shows officers handcuffing Leilla Hamoud at Winston-Salem State University after an apparent dispute between the student and her professor, Cynthia Villagomez.
Hamoud could be seen in the video sobbing and complaining that police were hurting her when they forced her arms behind her back over what she says was a dispute over her term paper.
He now faces misdemeanor disorderly conduct charges and is due back in court on January 25, according to World War II reporter Louie Tran.
But many of the 4 million people who have seen the video wonder if it was really necessary for staff at a black North Carolina university to call the police.
Hamoud could be seen screaming and crying as she claimed that the officers were hurting her.
A viral video posted online shows the moment Leilla Hamoud was handcuffed at Winston-Salem State University over an argument over an article.
The student was removed from the classroom by campus police and charged with a second degree misdemeanor.
The viral TikTok begins with two officers, one of whom is white while the other is black, forcing Hamoud to sit at a desk while handcuffing her behind her back.
The sobbing 20-year-old could be heard telling police ‘They’re hurting me a lot’ as her teacher denies calling local police about the student.
“I was trying to de-escalate,” said Villagómez, co-chair of the school’s political science, history and social justice department.
But Hamoud tells the teacher: ‘I hate you. I swear to God I hate you, I swear to God I hate you, you are the worst teacher of all.
“You make them take me out in handcuffs because I don’t apologize?”
‘You started yelling at me, you tried to shame me for my work. You are a lousy teacher.
“She’s sitting here and she says she loves black people and stuff,” Hamoud continues through tears. You yelled at me first.
That sentiment is then echoed by the class, apparently trying to defend Hamoud when she is led out of the classroom.
Still, Villagómez could be heard saying, “I was trying to apologize.”
It’s unclear what led to the arrest, but university spokeswoman Haley Gingles insisted the arrest was a last resort and came at least 10 minutes after the dispute began.
“From the time the initial disturbance started until the video clip started, a significant amount of time passed,” he said. nbc news. ‘Certainly, it was more than 10 minutes.’
He also said that Villagómez was not the person who called 911 for Hamoud, claiming that it actually came from another nearby teacher who overheard the discussion.
The teacher, Cynthia Villagomez, could be heard saying she tried to defuse the situation while apologizing to the students.
Hamoud, pictured, explained in an Instagram Live video that the arrest occurred when she refused to leave the classroom because she wanted to present her final project.
The chancellor of the university, Elwood Robinson, also said in a statement that the “significant commotion” caused another “close WSSU employee” to call campus police to “de-escalate the situation.”
‘We strive for an intellectual community that is safe, inclusive, and thriving, and where all of our faculty, staff, and students feel respected and supported.
“To that end, we will take prompt and appropriate action against any situation that contradicts those ideals.”
In an Instagram Live video following the viral incident, Hamoud decided to share his side of the story.
She said she and her classmates were part of a group project that included a live performance scheduled for Wednesday, but just hours before the group was due to present, Villagómez emailed her telling her to redo the written portion of homework.
Hamoud said she felt she didn’t have enough time to get back to work on the essay before it was submitted, but she attended class on Wednesday anyway.
“I’m not going to go back and redo this essay that took me two weeks and you told me six hours before,” he said in the video. “And yet I came to the final to perform with my group because that’s what we were supposed to do.”
After the class was briefly interrupted by a fire alarm, Hamoud said Villagomez began to get angry and said he could apologize for not redoing the essay or leaving the classroom.
In response, Hamoud said, she said she decided to stay in the classroom and continue with the presentation, which she said accounted for a large percentage of her grade.
Then boom, she starts yelling at me that this is her class. [and] it doesn’t matter what I think,’ Hamoud recounted. ‘I started to respond loudly, I’m not going to lie to you, he was also raising his voice.
“I’m like, ‘Dr. V, I’m not going to redo it, I’m here to perform with my group, like I’m here to do this and get out there.”
But, Hamoud said, Villagómez continued to demand that she leave before the professor finally left the classroom to speak with one of her colleagues.
Soon, Hamoud said, campus police arrive on the scene, with a black officer walking in and asking what had happened.
As I’m telling my story, the professor comes back and says, “Yes, officer, I want her removed.”
At that point, he says, another white officer came in and said, “You’ll have to get out or I’ll have to get you out.”
‘At this point, I’m like Dr. V. Is he going to get me arrested? And she’s trying to fix herself,” she said of the professor’s apology. He said either apologize or get out.
‘I said ‘Apologise?’ Now, the old me, I would have apologized, but I knew I wasn’t wrong. So I said, “Apologise because you yelled at me and dropped the F-bomb.”
She then revealed that she was charged with a second degree misdemeanor, but was released because she had no prior misdemeanors.
In the Instagram Live video, Hamoud says Villagomez was berating her for an essay she had asked her to rewrite just hours before Hamoud’s group was due to present their final project.
Many online are questioning whether the police were really necessary, saying it’s another example of police calling out Black people for non-threatening activities.
“In any classroom power struggle or dispute, there is not a single scenario where a law enforcement officer should be called into a classroom,” Erika Strauss Chavarria, organizer with Black Lives Matter at Schools.
And as some on TikTok pointed out, the incident happened at a historically black university, where black students are supposed to be safe.
“Weaponizing the police in an HBCU is crazy,” one commented.
Chavarria added, “The fact that this professor, who teaches at an HBCU and still doesn’t have the historical knowledge or the background or the common sense to not call a police officer on a student, is beyond me.”
Since then, school officials have said that they ‘understand that police weaponization is a frequent problem in our community; however, that is not what happened in this incident.’
And spokeswoman Gingles noted that Villagomez is now receiving threats online.
“She is struggling with the incident that happened yesterday,” he said. “Over the course of the day, she has received threats and people have been mean to her online.”