Unless you’ve been living under a rock the past few weeks, you’ve probably seen the viral video which appears to show 18-year-old Alaila Everett striking her opponent Kaelen Tucker with the baton during a race at the Virginia State High School League Championships at Virginia’s Liberty University on 4 March.
The video shows Alaila striking Kaelen, leaving her with a potential skull fracture, before overtaking her and finishing the race.
Kaelen shared her side of the story in a recent interview with 10 News, stating: “When you go to the other side of the track, you have to cross into lane one, you have to merge in. As I was coming up on her, she kind of like made me get cut off a little bit, so I backed away.”
“Then, as we got around the curve, she kept bumping me in my arm. Then finally we got off the curve, I like slowly started passing her and then that’s when she just hit me with the baton and I fell off the track.”
Pretty much all the angles of the race have been studied, and frankly, they don’t look particularly good on Alaila, but she suggested in a tearful interview that it was a complete accident and that she would never intentionally harm an opponent.
The youngster was charged with battery and assault earlier this week after court papers were served, but both she and her parents maintain that it was purely accidental, and insist that ‘the truth will be exposed’.
Alaila believes further footage of the incident shows her actions were not intentional (ABC News)
Posting on social media, Alaila’s father Genoa said: “We will continue to uplift and support our child to the upmost. We as a community will continue to fight for her.
“The truth will be exposed in due time and god’s timing is always perfect. Unity for Alaila.”
Speaking to ABC, the parents added: “It hurts because, man, y’all really picked the wrong child to criminalize like that.
“That’s nowhere near her nature. How would you feel waking up and seeing Gayle King or Good Morning, America talk about you or your daughter and not having the full story?
“You can clearly see in the video they were close,” Genoa said. “So what had happened was it was an illegal cut to my daughter’s lane, which caused the incidental contact.”
Alaila Everett in a recent interview (WAVY TV 10)
Her mum Zeketa Cost added: “Tell them that she did not do this and that she lost her balance. My daughter would never do something like this; she loves everybody. They were in 17th place, there was no need for this.”
While the footage doesn’t paint a good picture for the family, it is also easy to see how an accident could have occurred at such close quarters when running at speed.
There was less doubt about a similar incident in Spain, where one competitor shoved his opponent over the finish line. Needless to say, we won’t be seeing them perform at the Olympic Games anytime soon.
