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University of Richmond police are investigating an altercation between students and a delivery driver, the university president announced Tuesday.
The driver reportedly pulled out a gun after students threatened him and used racial slurs, The Richmond Times-Dispatch reported. The confrontation happened early Saturday morning in a parking lot on campus, and when police responded, a student was arrested for underage alcohol consumption, according to an incident report from the university.
“It is reported that during the incident one student used racist language and engaged in threatening behavior,” University of Richmond president Kevin Hallock said in a campuswide email. “The delivery driver was seen with a firearm.”
The university’s student newspaper, The Collegian, identified the student as freshman Alexander Unruh, who told the paper he and three friends kicked the driver’s vehicle and told him to leave the campus. However, he denied using slurs, counter to accounts by members of the campus Black Student Alliance. A video of the incident, published by The Collegian, shows Unruh repeatedly kicking and punching the driver’s car and slamming the door. When the driver brandishes what appears to be a gun, observers can be heard shouting at the student to leave the scene.
“A couple of my buddies were just like, ‘Yo, like, get off our campus, like, you’re on the wrong road,’” Unruh said in an interview with The Collegian. He added that he only called the driver a “pussy.”
“I know what I said, and it was not a racial slur,” the newspaper quoted him as saying.
The Collegian reported that Unruh said he waited for the police to arrive instead of leaving the scene because he felt “pretty scared” after the delivery driver drew a gun on him.
Hallock said he was “disgusted” by the incident.
“No student, staff or faculty member, or visitor should ever be confronted by offensive language or hostile behavior or feel threatened on our campus,” Hallock said. “I am absolutely disgusted that anyone would use hateful language or engage in harmful conduct here. I also want to be clear: other than for trained law enforcement officers, firearms are not allowed on our campus.”
