UNC Police arrested Student Veterans Assistance Coordinator Amber Mathwig on Wednesday after she refused to stop sitting on the steps of a campus building that was being used for an unannounced police training exercise.
Mathwig, a UNC employee since 2015, was charged with second-degree trespass and resisting an officer. In a public statement, Mathwig said she is now temporarily barred from the Carolina Veterans Resource Center, where she works, after being placed on “investigative leave” with pay.
UNC Police Spokesperson Randy Young stated in an email to The Daily Tar Heel that the department was conducting an active-shooter scenario exercise with other local first responder agencies in an abandoned building in Odum Village. That building is next to the veterans center.
Mathwig’s arrest, made by Officer Ryan Kay around 5:30 p.m., occurred just hours after a large campus protest against police brutality.
Kay made a separate arrest last year that has been the subject of recent criticism. The Daily Tar Heel reported contradictions between claims made by him and other officers about that arrest and the content of Kay’s body camera footage, which had been subpoenaed by the student’s attorney.
In her statement, Mathwig said she noticed the training drill on Wednesday as she left the Odum Village parking lot and saw several law enforcement vehicles, dozens of officers wearing paintball-style masks, a few rifles with orange caps on their muzzles and more.
Both Mathwig and a witness of her arrest – undergraduate Roger Kennely, who works under Mathwig at the veterans center – said the location of the exercise concerned them.
When she “heard a very distinguishable ‘pop-pop-pop’ from inside the building,” Mathwig said she became convinced that UNC Police was conducting simunition round training. It “petrified” her, Mathwig stated, given the knowledge she had gained as a 10-year U.S. Navy Master-at-Arms.
“While a lower velocity than actual ammunition, simunition rounds are a projectile that can break glass and cause bruising and cuts to the skin if struck,” Mathwig stated. “In addition to 10 years of generally conducting training around policing tactics and firearms in the military, I specifically worked for a training unit for three years that conducted regular training with simunition rounds. Because of the risks associated with their use, and that they should never be mixed with actual weapons or people unaware of what is going on, these trainings were held in unused buildings that were fenced, clearly marked and had access control through one point of entry only.”
