Alleged UW knife-wielder arrested
A scuffle between two UW-Madison students resulted in an arrest after a knife was pulled on Bascom Hill at approximately midnight Tuesday, following an initiation event hosted by UW-Madison's Alpha Phi Alpha chapter, a historically black fraternity.
There was a confrontation and one of the subjects was arrested and taken to jail. He was booked with recklessly endangering safety, carrying a concealed weapon and disorderly conduct while armed,\ said UW Police Lieutenant Eric Holen, who was on the scene.
Police arrested UW-Madison senior Marques Jackson for allegedly wielding a knife during the scuffle.
Upon arrival, Holen said there was a crowd, but it seemed like people in the area were already separating the subject from the victim.
Although the incident was at the same location of APA's event, fraternity members said the subjects involved in the fight had no affiliation with APA or the event and were stragglers from the general public.
""We don't know anything,"" said Remi Aregbesda, a UW-Madison senior and APA member. ""There seems to be an incident involving two students from the University and that's all we know.""
He said, however, that police might have been in the area before receiving a call.
Referring to the fraternity's parade up the hill, Aregbesda said, ""A crowd of students of color does draw attention in Madison from the police and anybody else.""
""The police knew what was going on,"" said Aregbesda. In fact, he said police questioned some brothers beforehand. ""One of my brothers said [to the police], ‘We're having a quick performance and then leaving'.""
However, two male UW-Madison students, law student Brandon Vaughn and senior William Jones, who attended the event but were not a part of APA, said they did not notice police until they heard someone had pulled a knife. Following the show, two police officers approached and questioned Vaughn and Jones as they walked to their car in the Chadbourne parking lot around 1:00 a.m.
The police detained the two because ""they were looking for an African-American male, and I fit that description,"" said Vaughn. After approximately 30 minutes of waiting, the police told Vaughn and Jones the suspect was found and they were free to go.
When asked if he felt targeted, Vaughn said his rights ""were violated … I felt like no matter what I told the police officer, he wasn't going to listen to what I said.""\
