Brianna Brochu asked a Connecticut judge this week to allow her into a probation program that could erase criminal charges from her record, the Associated Press reports.
Last year, social media was set ablaze after Chennel "Jazzy" Rowe posted a video on Facebook claiming that her white roommate was poisoning her and violating her personal property.
The black student at University of Hartford said that she had been feeling sick for a while, and doctors couldn't figure out why. She later discovered that Brochu had been putting rotten food in her beauty supplies, and had smeared her backpack with a used tampon. Reports state that the 18-year-old former University of Hartford student also put Rowe's toothbrush in intimate areas, put moldy clam dip in her lotions, and spit in her coconut oil.
Brochu pleaded not guilty to putting her blood and other bodily fluids on Rowe’s belongings. Blavity later reported that the 18-year-old suspect confessed to police that she did, in fact, rub her bodily fluids on Rowe's property.
Brochu has not been charged with a hate crime, but she was charged with breach of peace and criminal mischief.
“This was blatant racism. The whole country saw it,” Scot X. Esdaile, president of the Connecticut NAACP chapter, said in regards to the case.
The probation program Brochu hopes to get into is generally for first-time, non-violent defendants. After completing it, participants have their criminal records wiped clean.
A judge set a hearing for the probation application on March 12.
“We don’t have evidence to support that the conduct that Brianna Brochu engaged in was committed to intimidate or harass Miss Rowe because of her perceived race or ethnicity,” Gail Hardy, Hartford state attorney, told the AP.
Tom Stevens, Brochu's attorney, said he believes that the two students just did not like each another, and that his client's actions were not racially motivated.
“Why burden an 18-year-old with a criminal record when you have the belief that it was an isolated incident that will never happen again?” Stevens asked.
