The Georgetown University women’s basketball team is under fire for honoring a former player who was shot to death by a police officer she slashed with a knife.
The Hoyas’ official X account posted a tribute to the former player Sydney Wilsonmourning her “tragic loss” last month … but now the post is drawing criticism because newly released police body camera footage shows her attacking the officer — slashing his face — before he shoots and kills her.
Georgetown women’s basketball mourns the tragic loss of Sydney Wilson (C’13). Forever a Hoya.#HoyaSaxa pic.twitter.com/vqwD8M6x4t
-Georgetown WBB (@GeorgetownWBB) September 20, 2024
@GeorgetownWBB
The tribute post has been on the Georgetown women’s basketball team’s Page X since September 20. Sydney, who played for GU from 2009 to 2013, died Sept. 16 in a police shooting — and video of the fatal altercation was just released Monday.
Now that it’s clear what led to her death, many people online are calling on the GU women’s basketball team to take down the post… and there’s a community note saying “Sydney Wilson was shot to death after trying to stab a police officer in Fairfax County, VA.”
Body camera footage shows a Fairfax County police officer Peter Liu conducting what officers say was a welfare check on Wilson. The officer knocks on her apartment door and Wilson opens the door and slams it shut.
The officer knocks again, tells Wilson she’s “not in trouble,” and when she finally opens the door, raises a knife in her right hand and lunges toward Liu’s face.
Liu walks back and Wilson follows him down the hallway, knife in hand… and he tells her to “please come back.” Wilson attacks Liu with the knife and then opens fire.
Police say Liu shot Wilson three times in the upper body and she was taken to a local hospital, where she was pronounced dead.
After the shooting, you can see Officer Liu bleeding profusely from his knife wound, but police say his wound was not life-threatening.