Black-clad protestors screamed and heckled at a college student and Jeff Younger, the father of a child at the center of national disputes over transgenderism, forcing police to rush the student and Younger to safety, according to interviews and video footage obtained by The Daily Wire.
Purportedly spurred on by anger over Texas’ new transgender directive, which compels investigations of “abusive” transition procedures for children, at least 70 black-clad protestors milled into the Young Conservatives of Texas’ Wednesday evening event at the University of North Texas.
The event, which took place in the university’s Curry Hall, featured Jeff Younger, a political candidate in Texas and the father of a child whose mother claims the child is transgender.
But during the event, police suddenly entered the room and ordered student Kelly Neidert, who helped publicize the event, and Younger to evacuate, Neidert told The Daily Wire. The student described tense moments following the evacuation, in which she hid in a janitor’s closet with a policeman as screaming protestors ran through the halls of the building searching for her.
Neidert and Younger, who is the father of James Younger, a boy whose mother insists he is a girl and treats him as such, said that members of the University of North Texas police department, the Texas Department of Public Safety, and the Denton Police Department were present on Wednesday night. None of these organizations responded to The Daily Wire’s requests for comment.
In a video recorded by Neidert, a protestor can be heard screaming, “F*** you, f*** you” in a crowded parking lot as Neidert attempts to get into a police car. Neidert, a former president of the University of North Texas chapter of Young Conservatives of Texas, said that the video shows police escorting her out of the building.
“F***ing ugly, f***ing ugly fat b****,” one person can be heard shrieking. The screaming protestors can be seen holding signs saying “your hate speech has no place here.”
Here's video footage from @kelly_neidert, a current member of the University of North Texas chapter of Young Conservatives of Texas who formerly served as the chapter's president, showing police escorting her from the building as protestors scream outside. pic.twitter.com/gjtiXeU7DZ
— Mary Margaret Olohan (@MaryMargOlohan) March 3, 2022
Neidert told The Daily Wire that though she attempted to video and document everything, she feared for her life.
“Initially when we were first led out of the building to evacuate, I felt like everything was gonna be under control, but after I was chased into the building with a police officer, when we were in this janitor’s closet, I honestly was very scared,” she said.
“This stuff hasn’t ever really seemed scary to me,” she added. “I guess I don’t really care about the backlash I received, but when I was literally hiding in a janitor’s closet with a police officer and the lights off with these people running in the hallway, screaming, I mean, at that point I was pretty scared for my life.”
Both Younger and Neidert believe that they were mobbed by people aligned with Antifa. The anti-fascist account “Elm Fork John Brown Gun Club” posted repeatedly about the event, warning in one tweet, “If you were at the UNT protest, no you weren’t. Be proud of what you accomplished and wary of the media hype circulating your faces.”
Approx 30 police in riot gear staging at hickory hall UNT. @anonuntsquirrel pic.twitter.com/CXAp2Skznu
— Elm Fork John Brown Gun Club (@EFJBGC) March 3, 2022
If you were at the UNT protest, no you weren't. Be proud of what you accomplished and wary of the media hype circulating your faces.
Friends don't film friends.
— Elm Fork John Brown Gun Club (@EFJBGC) March 3, 2022
The account did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Daily Wire.
Fleeing From The Protestors
Neidert told The Daily Wire that the police evacuated her and Younger from the event “all of a sudden.”
“A flood of police officers from the hallway came in and [they] were grabbing me and Jeff and then [we] were rushed out in the back of the building,” she explained.
“At that point, I was separated from the police officer and Jeff,” she said. “I was getting hit with signs because they were trying to get me separated. And so I did get separated. At that point I’m being shoved, I’m not sure if it’s by police officers behind me or if it’s by these protestors. I still don’t know.”
Younger was able to get into the car with a police officer and the car door was shut, she said. But she was not able to get into the car because she had been separated from the group.
“The police officers that were outside of the car were holding everybody back, including me,” she said. “And I said, no, I need to be in that car.”
Neidert was wearing a MAGA hat and a Governor Greg Abbott shirt, she said, and one officer got a good look at her and realized that she needed help.
“So that officer starts chasing after the car and they were having some difficulty leaving because there were about, I’d say 150 people that were at the back of the building at that point, and so of course, all these people are swarming and not wanting the police car to leave.”
“So we tried to get the car to let us in, but if they had opened the door for me, these protestors would’ve been able to get in,” she added. “So they were unable to open the open the door and that car just left.”
“And so then I had these police officers running with me to these other police cars, but for some reason, nobody had the keys to the cars,” Neidert said. “It was pretty frantic. So we didn’t really have time to wait and figure out who had keys to which car. And so at that point, people have realized that it’s me out there. They started screaming my name and were chasing after us. And so we run into a nearby building and the police officer locks the door behind us.”
Neidert said there were two other entrances to the building, an auditorium, besides the one they entered through, but she is not sure if the other entrances were locked. When she looked down the hall at one point and saw a “mass of people banging on the door to get in,” the officer had her turn around and run back to where they came from and up some stairs.
Kelly and a police officer took refuge in a janitor’s closet, she tells @realDailyWire. She could hear people running in the hallway and one person reportedly tried the door handle.
“At that point they did not know where I was, they just knew I was in the building,” she says. pic.twitter.com/DHn1oiYHs8
— Mary Margaret Olohan (@MaryMargOlohan) March 3, 2022
“And then we hear that people are getting in the building,” she said. “So we get to the third floor of this building, and they have me in a janitor’s closet with a police officer. And at that point, the janitor’s closet locked from the inside. And so we could open it, but people in the outside couldn’t.”
“At that point, they did not know where I was, they just knew I was in the building,” she explained.
Neidert said that she and the police officer could hear people running in the hallway and screaming, and they turned off the lights in the closet. Though she said that someone ran by and shook the door handle, her whereabouts were not discovered.
“I’m not sure how much time passed,” she said. “I wanna say it was probably about 20 minutes.”
By that time the crowd had been backed off the building enough that they could get out and into a police car, she told The Daily Wire. But then the crowd swarmed the car, she said, adding that one person even jumped in front of the vehicle. She believes that person was hit by the car, though she is not sure.
Here’s the moment Kelly finally got into a police car. Watch how the protestors react when they realize she’s getting away pic.twitter.com/nm3rZDnQvB
— Mary Margaret Olohan (@MaryMargOlohan) March 3, 2022
“We just booked it,” she said.
Younger repeatedly praised the protection he received from police to The Daily Wire.
“They had a whole plan to evacuate us and got us out of there,” he said. He estimated that there were about 300 people waiting outside the back door of the building when he stepped outside with Neidert and the police.
“I’m not sure I was afraid for my life,” he said, “but I really thought we were going to get into it.”
Violent Threats Before The Event
The backlash follows Governor Greg Abbott (R-TX) direction to the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services to investigate the parents of children who have undergone “so-called ‘sex change’ procedures.”
Abbott had warned that “it is already against the law to subject Texas children to a wide variety of elective procedures for gender transitioning, including reassignment surgeries that can cause sterilization, mastectomies, removals of otherwise healthy body parts, and administration of puberty-blocking drugs or supraphysiologic doses of testosterone or estrogen.”
Neidert told The Daily Wire that she has received many violent threats over her affiliation with the event.
Students had also started a petition to expel Neidert, accusing her of perpetuating “a hostile environment by encouraging and disseminating transphobic, racist, and homophobic rhetoric.” The petition has garnered over 17,000 signatures.
The petition refers to a controversy that initially started when Neidert printed out flyers for the Thursday evening event with Younger in the school library. The flyers called for the criminalization of child transgender transitions, she told The Daily Wire, and a student who saw her printing them confronted her and began “cursing [her] out.”
Neidert took a video of the interaction and posted it on social media, where it quickly raked in over a million views.
“So then the story started getting out about what I was printing on campus,” she said. The university president issued a statement that did not specifically name Neidert or the club, she said, but he warned that though students on campus might have hurtful or intolerant views, their views are still protected speech.
“I know the last several days may have felt particularly difficult for the transgender members of our community, due to the intolerant views of a handful of campus members,” the statement said. “We have a variety of resources through our Division of Inclusion, Diversity, Equity and Access to support you during your time at UNT, and we hope to offer you a safe place to heal and grow your support system.”
The university has not responded to requests for comment from The Daily Wire.
Both before and after the university statement, Neidert said that she received a slew of violent threats. The Daily Wire reviewed the messages, many of which include curse words and threats of violence.
“I believe that this started over the video I posted of the student confronting me in the library because of my flyers, and once students found out what the flyers were for, everything just snowballed from there,” Neidert said. “I also think Greg Abbott’s Executive Order regarding transgender children along with his win in the Republican primary on Tuesday also contributed a lot of the animosity and vitriol of the students/antifa people who showed up.”
“If the stuff with Abbott hadn’t just happened, I think there still would have been protestors and outrage but not to this extent.”