Editor’s Note: After this story was published stating that only Cesario was arrested, the SIU police department called the Daily Egyptian to confirm that they arrested Myers after seeing the full video footage. The story below has been updated to reflect the new information. This story has since been updated to include more information from the TPUSA SIU chapter’s statement posted on Oct. 6. 

Two people were arrested and later released on Wednesday, Oct. 1 after an altercation at a Turning Point USA booth outside of Lawson Hall.

SIU police first arrested SIU student Carmella Cesario around 2:30 p.m. after getting a call that Cesario had gotten into a physical altercation with Nathan Myers. The altercation, part of which can be seen on video here, was recalled differently among various eyewitnesses.

SIU police did not immediately arrest Myers at the scene — only Cesario was apprehended at that time. The officers were originally only shown video footage of the incident by members of TPUSA, and eyewitnesses told the Daily Egyptian that TPUSA members were most of whom the police had spoken to when conducting their original investigation. 

Myers, who does not have a record in SIU’s campus directory, was later arrested for battery after the SIU police department obtained video footage showing a more complete version of the altercation. 

Despite originally being told they were being arrested for battery, Cesario was only charged with criminal damage.

“Physical violence is not tolerated on campus,” SIU police chief Ben Newman told the DE. “Both parties were arrested. An unaffiliated person, depicted in part of the video posted, was arrested for battery.” 

Videos taken from multiple angles show Myers slamming Cesario to the ground as the two argued. Footage obtained by the Daily Egyptian shows Myers grabbing Cesario’s arm from over their shoulder as the pair were picking up flyers from the ground, then throwing Cesario onto the sidewalk.  

Zachary Lochard, the SIU chapter president of TPUSA, said he was at lunch when he got a call about the altercation and ran back to the booth. Lochard told the DE that he watched a video of the altercation taken by TPUSA saying “it did look really bad,” and that Cesario got “physical” with his colleague.  

“So I’ve been doing some minor political action on campus for the last semester or two,” Cesario said. “Whenever they (TPUSA) show up, I take all their papers, and usually they don’t stop me, because I assume they aren’t supposed to physically assault people. But this time, when I took their papers as I was turning away, one of the Turning Point people, a man with a maroon shirt and a beard, grabbed my bag and threw me to the ground. I started grabbing some more of their signage, and he grabbed me and threw me down again. And when I tried to get up and grab some of the things I dropped, he threw me down again.” 

According to Lochard, this incident would not have been the first time in which law enforcement have been made aware of the animosity between Cesario and TPUSA. 

“We have had interactions with her at least four times before,” Lochard said. “She’s trashed our tables, she’s stolen stuff from us, she’s destroyed our property, and we have filed a police report once before. This time, it got taken to another level.” 

On Monday, Oct. 6, the SIU TPUSA chapter released a statement regarding the incident, which said that the chapter had filed a report with SIU police after past encounters with Cesario. 

Myers is not a member of SIU’s TPUSA chapter, but is a member of the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow — or CFACT — and was there promoting the organization, which often partners with TPUSA. 

“The TPUSA at SIUC team condemns the actions of both parties, as their behaviors do not reflect the values we uphold, nor did they conduct themselves properly,” the TPUSA statement said. 

In the video, TPUSA and CFACT pamphlets, posters and papers can be seen strewn across the Lawson lawn, which Myers said Cesario had done, prompting the altercation. 

“She (Cesario) decided to come and tear everything up and rip things out of the ground,” Myers told the DE. “So I went to reclaim our property — which had not been given to her. She didn’t even say anything when she walked up, she just walked up and immediately started trashing the table. So it got a little physical, unfortunately. I didn’t want it to, but I had to defend us and defend our stuff.” 

Myers alleged that it was Cesario who first started to get physical. The videos obtained by the DE only show the altercation after it began. In one, Cesario is seen first on the ground, which they say is after Myers had thrown them there. Cesario is then seen standing up and gathering papers as the two continued to argue – that is when it appears that Myers grabbed Cesario by the arm and spun them around, throwing them to the ground again. 

“There’s a cut on my face,” Cesario said. “I have several scrapes and bruises on my hands and forearms, and I just want there to be a paper trail, because initially I was arrested as the person who did battery… I did not put my hands on the other person. The only things I touched were physical objects. I did not harm the other person. He attempted to coerce me into hurting him. He was trying to make me mad, but he did throw me to the ground at least three times.”

Rachel Howell, who was sitting on a bench right outside of Lawson, said Cesario took papers off of the TPUSA table and threw them away. 

“There was like a little bit of scramble to pick up all the papers and throw them away or put them back on the table or whatever,” Howell said. “And then the guy in the maroon shirt (Myers) was a few yards away, and he saw everything going on, so he ran over there and said, ‘Hey, get your hands off my s—.’

“Then they started arguing a little bit,” Howell said. “They ended up taking more papers, and the guy (Myers) threw the person (Cesario) to the ground. There was a little scuffle. They (Cesario) were telling them to ‘get your hands off of me,’ ‘this is assault,’ ‘please don’t touch me.’ And then the person went to get up — and he threw them again.”

Val Weaver, who was just on their way to a lecture in Lawson, also witnessed the incident.

“I noticed that there was this group of guys with a tent or whatever and they were there with this other individual that was mostly in black clothing,” Weaver said. “I noticed that they were arguing with each other, and then like a second later, this man in a maroon staff shirt had body-grabbed this other individual and like, screwed them into the concrete.”

After Cesario got up, they rushed to their art history class in Lawson, where they told the TA that they had been assaulted, witnesses said. 

“They were shaking and they got a TA to go call the authorities,” Weaver said. “There was a group of several other people in Lawson that were recording this and watching it go down, and we were all like, ‘Hey, are you okay? What happened?’ And they were like ‘No, he just assaulted me.’”

Cesario and Weaver said they felt like the way SIU police originally conducted their investigation of the situation was biased toward TPUSA.

“The interaction with the officer was very strange,” Cesario said. “The way he approached me, it seemed like he assumed I was the aggressor and was going to be aggressive with him. 

“I told him my injuries, and I showed him my injuries, and the conversation was maybe like a minute and a half to two minutes. He took my ID, and then he went to go talk to the people outside.”

Weaver said the police first consulted with TPUSA members, which was when they were able to view the video footage that TPUSA had filmed. At that time, Weaver had been consulting Cesario, who they identified as the victim in this situation.  

“I was still with the victim (Cesario),” Weaver said. “It felt wrong to just leave them alone when they didn’t even have a friend with them yet. So I stuck around, and then these two cops came over and they were like, ‘So, what happened?’ And so the victim responded, ‘This guy assaulted me for taking some papers,’ and then the officer went, ‘Well, I’m afraid I have some bad news,’ or something like that. And then he goes, ‘According to all of the eyewitness response reports and videos that I saw — you’re the one that instigated this and acted out first.’ And then he says, ‘I’m going to have to arrest you.’

“It’s the fact that I literally saw this go down,” Weaver continued. “I saw this all happen, and he (the police officer) did not ask a single individual that had stuck with a victim what happened. There were literally 234 other people who had recorded this entire event and he didn’t look for that.”

The Daily Egyptian will continue to report on this story as more information becomes available.

News Editor Jackson Brandhorst can be reached at [email protected] and Daily Egyptian staff can be reached at [email protected].

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