A group of White juveniles in Christiansburg, Virginia, has been cleared by police after a Black Virginia Tech professor filed a criminal complaint alleging they committed a hate crime outside his home. The Christiansburg Police Department found no evidence of criminal intent or racial bias following a detailed investigation that included multiple interviews and a third-party eyewitness.
The incident, as reconstructed by police, amounted to teenagers shoveling frozen snow out of a truck bed on their way home from a gathering.
That didn't stop a local activist group from publicly branding the kids as racial terrorists before investigators had finished their work.
According to Fox News, Dr. Onwubiko Agozino, a sociology professor at Virginia Tech who describes himself as a "scholar-activist who values inclusive excellence and diversity with critical attention focused on people of African descent and other marginalized groups," filed a criminal complaint on Feb. 10 alleging that a group of White juveniles targeted his home in an act of racial intimidation.
Police investigated. What they found was considerably less dramatic. The Town of Christiansburg released a statement explaining the full sequence of events:
"After several interviews, including a third-party eyewitness, and a detailed investigation, detectives found that a group of juveniles were attending an organized function at a home in the area. Before departure, two juveniles attempted to clear frozen snow and ice out of the bed of a truck, but were unable to completely remove, due to the slope of the vehicle. Upon departure, the juveniles stopped at a flat spot on the street, where a juvenile pushed out the remaining frozen snow and ice."
That flat spot on the street happened to be in front of Dr. Agozino's home. The juveniles also played music from their truck. That was the incident. Snow removal and a stereo.
The town was unambiguous in its conclusion:
"There have been incorrect reports that this may have been a targeted incident toward a specific residence or person based on racial bias."
And further:
"The Christiansburg Police Department does not tolerate discrimination, hate speech or racial profiling within the Town of Christiansburg. Our investigation has found no evidence of criminal intent or racial bias."
No charges were filed. The College Fix first reported the police findings.
Before police finished their investigation, New River Valley Indivisible, part of the national nonprofit Indivisible, launched a public campaign that read less like a community alert and more like a prosecutorial brief written by someone who skipped the evidence-gathering phase.
Their Facebook post declared:
"NRV Indivisible vehemently condemns the recent, despicable act of racist intimidation and harassment that occurred in our community. Dr. Biko Agozino (who recently ran for delegate in the 42d district) and his family were targeted at their home by a group of 8 White young men riding in four 4 different trucks."
The group went further, claiming the juveniles "unleashed a torrent of racial slurs, including the N-word, and threw ice bricks onto the property, blocking his driveway." They characterized the playing of a Drake song as "a calculated effort to terrorize and intimidate Biko and his family."
Consider the distance between those claims and what police actually found:
The group called for criminal and civil action at the state level and prosecution under federal hate crime laws. For shoveling snow.
Neither NRV Indivisible nor Virginia Tech returned requests for comment.
To his credit, Dr. Agozino acknowledged the police findings in a statement to Fox News Digital, though he framed them in terms that suggest he remains unsatisfied:
"They investigated and identified the suspects. They claimed that they had no bad intent and the police concluded that there was no evidence of hate crime."
Note the word "suspects" applied to juveniles who were cleared of wrongdoing, and "claimed" doing the heavy lifting to cast doubt on the conclusion. He also pressed a legal theory that intent shouldn't be the only standard:
"I reminded the police that intent is only one element of crime because reckless or unreasonable behavior that is threatening to anyone is considered a breach of the law even if there is no intent to harm anyone."
The argument, distilled: even if the kids meant nothing by it, their behavior should still be treated as criminal because he experienced it as threatening. This is the "impact over intent" framework that has migrated from campus diversity trainings into real-world criminal complaints. It asks law enforcement to judge actions not by what happened, but by how someone felt about what happened.
Agozino also described a second-day incident in which he said one of the trucks parked near his letterbox for about 20 minutes. Police or any other source does not corroborate this claim. He added that he hopes the police conclusion "will not unwittingly embolden the suspects," again using the word "suspects" for cleared juveniles.
The structure of this story is numbingly familiar. An ambiguous encounter gets filtered through an ideological lens. Activist groups often amplify the worst possible interpretation before anyone has had a chance to investigate. Public statements are issued. Federal prosecution is demanded. And then the facts arrive, quietly, and they don't support the narrative.
But by then, the damage is done. A group of juveniles had their names run through a police investigation. An activist organization published a detailed accusation of racial terrorism on social media. The retraction, if it ever comes, will reach a fraction of the audience that saw the original claim.
This is what happens when the framework comes before the facts. Dr. Agozino is a scholar-activist who, by his own description, "emphasizes race, class, and gender issues" in his work. NRV Indivisible exists to mobilize political energy. Neither had any institutional incentive to wait for the investigation to conclude, and neither did.
The Christiansburg Police Department, meanwhile, did its job. Officers interviewed multiple people, including an independent eyewitness. They followed the evidence. The evidence pointed to teenagers and a truck full of snow.
The kids were cleared. Whether anyone will clear their names is a different question entirely.