Military sergeant alleges racial discrimination after she’s charged with assault in road rage brawl
A woman arrested for stabbing another woman in the leg during a road-rage altercation in February has claimed that she acted in self-defense — and now she’s hoping that recently released security footage proves her side of the story.
“As a soldier and a senior noncommissioned officer, and a Black female, it was clear that I was automatically identified as the assailant,” wrote Fort Knox military Sgt. Kai Waters, who was charged with felony assault, in a Facebook post that has since been deleted.
However, Waters claims, she was actually the victim of racial discrimination by both the unidentified other woman and by local authorities.
Waters, according to her accounts on both Facebook and as told to WAVE 3 News, was driving home on Feb. 22 when a car began aggressively tailgating and honking at her on a western Kentucky highway. At one point, the older white woman driving the gray Nissan Altima even hit the bumper of her white BMW, and later pulled up next to her at a stoplight to yell racial slurs through her open windows.
“She called me a black b****,” Waters, 33, told WAVE. “She said ‘your kind, I’m so tired of your people’ and all of this.” The military sergeant began calling 911 to report the driver as she pulled into a busy gas station.
“I wanted to get out and rush into the gas station, where there would be other people who could help me get this strange woman away from me,” she wrote on Facebook.
Now, in recently released surveillance footage of the altercation, Water’s attorney Jeremy Aldridge points out his client’s white vehicle pulling in, quickly followed by the other driver pulling open Waters’ driver’s side car door. It was then that the military officer claims that the woman began punching her as she was on the phone with police.
“I told her, ‘You know I’m on the phone with a 911 operator,” the Chicago native military officer told WAVE. “They can hear you.”
Waters jumped out of the car with her phone and and a knife she had received as a military honor during her time as a drill sergeant at Fort Drum.
“As you can see in the video I am kicking at her and screaming at her to leave me alone and go away,” Waters wrote on her now-deleted Facebook post. At some point during the altercation, Waters claims she stabbed the Kentucky woman in the leg in self-defense, but “she continue[d] to lunge at me and attack me.”
After a prolonged struggle, the unidentified woman got back into her car to drive away. One can see Waters chase after the gray vehicle in the surveillance footage, which she claims she did to make note of the woman’s license plate and her car’s make and model to report to local authorities.
When Elizabethtown police officers initially arrived at the scene, she says she felt relieved— that is until officers placed her in the back of their police cruiser and arrested her, assuming she was the assailant. (That woman told WAVE that she wanted to share her side of the story but could not “because she’s a witness.”)
“I thought hopefully, someone is going to listen to me, they’re going to get my story,” she told WAVE, adding that she has photos of the woman’s gray scuff marks on her back bumper. “But that never happened.” She was later charged with felony assault, punishable by 5 to 10 years imprisonment. Additionally, a judge ordered she live in the barracks at Fort Knox, despite having rented a home off the base, and mandated a mental health evaluation.
“I understood from that moment that I was being treated differently,” she wrote. “I know everyone that is released on bail does not have to seek mental advice or is restricted to their home.”
The officer who was first on the scene was lauded as a hero by a local news station for “saving two lives in two days,” as he tended to the woman he believed to be the victim, applying a tourniquet to her wound until medics arrived.
Elizabethtown Police Department denied Yahoo Lifestyle’s requests for comment. “The case involving Ms. Waters is still in the court system so we cannot discuss it right now,” Sgt. Matt Coogle said in an email. “We ask that everyone be patient until the case has gone through the judicial process.”
According to Army Times, Waters was previously deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan, served as a drill sergeant and awarded over 20 different military medals for her achievements after “three years of unblemished service.” With the release of the surveillance footage, leaders at Fort Knox are standing by their own.
“She is a trusted leader and this turn of events is in total contradiction to her performance and character,” Lt. Col. Alicia Masson, her branch chief, said in a statement to Army Times. "I understand the police department has a job to do but now that the truth is seen by video that our soldier was attacked, I hope there will be swift correction to this situation and her rights returned. I stand behind her and am anxious for justice.”
On March 9, Waters and close friends started a GoFundMe campaign with a goal of $10,000 to go towards hiring legal defense; any excess money, the page says, will be donated to the Southern Poverty Law Center.
Waters was recruited from Hardin County, New York to help soldiers manage and elevate their careers working at the Human Resources Command at Fort Knox. “Oh I was happy, it was like the happiest day of my life,” Waters told WAVE. After the incident, however, Waters now feels “terrified.”
“Currently, my entire career and military future are in jeopardy and I need your help,” Waters wrote in her Facebook post, adding that she has had a “a pristine and competitive military record” throughout her nearly 15 years in the armed forces. “I need the public to know the truth, regarding what actually happened on this evening, and assist me with obtaining justice.”
A grand jury, set to meet on Apr. 18, will later determine whether or not to indict Waters.
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