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A man who yelled racial slurs and attacked UNC-Chapel Hill students with a sharpened stick after crashing a “Love Island” watch party on campus in August pleaded guilty Monday.
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Keegan Wilson, a 45-year-old UNC alumnus, appeared in shackles and an orange jail jumpsuit for the Orange County District Court hearing on charges of disorderly conduct and simple assault. He agreed to plead guilty in return for a suspended, 60-day jail sentence and 12 months of unsupervised probation.
Wilson was expected to be released from the Orange County jail later Monday and remains trespassed from the UNC campus.
The judge ordered him to continue with mental health treatment and medication. If he doesn’t, he could face more jail time or court visits, District Court Judge Todd Roper told Wilson.
“If you ever have that feeling, that, hey, I don’t need this to I feel so good, I don’t need it, talk to the professionals first before you make that rash decision, because we don’t want you to fall into an unmedicated situation,” Roper said.
Wilson was arrested after crashing the watch party held by Black student organizations around 9:45 p.m. Aug. 31 in Greenlaw Hall on the UNC campus, Assistant District Attorney Tyler Ventura said. Witnesses told police that he started yelling and throwing pizza boxes at the students before taking someone’s bag, he said.
After he was confronted, Wilson left but returned with a sharpened stick, brandishing it at the students, the prosecutor said. When they fled the building, Wilson followed them, yelling racial slurs and threats, he said. The students recorded him with their phones.
Wilson pushed one student before fleeing the scene and was arrested by UNC police near Kenan Stadium.
“The harm done was disproportionate to any intent,” Wilson’s attorney, Brian Ziegler, said about the incident. Wilson has lived with mental illness for many years and was experiencing a crisis that night, he said.
Wilson’s mother told The News & Observer earlier this month that her son has bipolar disorder and had not been taking his medication.
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On Monday, Ziegler confirmed the diagnosis, telling the court that Wilson suffers from schizoaffective disorder, a type of bipolar disorder that includes symptoms of schizophrenia, such as hallucinations, as well as episodes of mania and depression.
Wilson, who lives in Wake County, went to Chapel Hill that day for a doctor’s appointment, Ziegler said. He had been homeless for several months and had not eaten for two days when he decided to go to Lenoir Dining Hall on campus to look for food. That’s when Wilson saw the watch party and the pizza boxes in the Greenlaw Building next door, he said.
But Wilson found the boxes empty, and spying a bag with Doritos inside, he grabbed it and refused to give it up when the owner confronted him, causing a struggle, Ziegler said.
Outside the building, people were recording Wilson, and some of them were screaming and yelling, while others laughed at him, Ziegler said. Wilson bit his own wrist, later telling police that he had been surrounded by vampires and one of them bit him, he said.
“For Mr. Wilson, in the state that he was in, it was all very scary, and it caused him to freak out even further,” Ziegler said.
Wilson was involuntarily committed to a psychiatric hospital for over a week after the incident, and he doesn’t remember using racial slurs, Ziegler said. He is now seeing a psychiatrist in Wake County, taking medication and getting help to find housing, he said.
“I know Mr. Wilson feels terrible that his actions caused hardship for students starting their journey there, and he wants them to have the same positive experience that he did,” Ziegler said.
Wilson still faces charges of breaking and entering and violating a domestic violence protective order in Wake County, court records show.
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