Photo: TikTok
Nobody is sure who to criticize on this one.
By Amanda Hartmann — Written on Dec 04, 2021
Caroline Walker teased a wild discovery she had made to her TikTok followers, leaving them baffled and wanting more information.
“I found out my ex roomie/sorority little was arrested for Mürd3ring a Wh*te Supr3macist,” she captioned the video.
Unsurprisingly, her followers wanted to know more, and she soon followed up with all the details on exactly how her ex-roommate and sorority sister ended up here.
In TikTok, Walker explained that her sorority sister killed a man in a drunken crash.
Filling in on her backstory, Walker says that her ex-roommate, Emily Sherry, had “issues on issues, number one being substance abuse.”
As it turns out, the substance abuse would later play a major role in the event.
It had been a few years after the two had gone their separate ways when Sherry drove under the influence with a BAC of 0.422, which is about five times the legal limit, according to police. She also tested positive for marijuana use.
On April 21, 2018, Sherry had driven under the influence into oncoming traffic on Interstate 275, striking another vehicle.
The struck vehicle flipped several times before it crashed into a tree.
The owner of that vehicle was Robert Ransdell, who was found by the police, pinned under the vehicle. He was pronounced dead at the scene.
He was killed by blunt force trauma, as ruled by the Campbell County coroner.
However, the drunken driving casualty alone is not the reason this story recently blew up. What intrigued millions of TikTok users to this case in particular was that Robert Ransdell was known to be a white supremacist and Neo-Nazi.
Robert Ransdell was actively anti-Semitic and involved in Neo-Nazism.
In 2014, only four years prior to his death, he ran for the U.S. Senate in Kentucky as a write-in candidate, with the obviously anti-Semitic slogan “With Jews, we lose.”
Also, he was involved with the National Alliance in Northern Kentucky and was the NA’s Cincinnati coordinator as well.
If you’re unfamiliar with the name, the National Alliance is classified as a Neo-Nazi hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center and had been one of the most dangerous Neo-Nazi groups for several decades of America’s history.
The hate group’s founder, William Pierce, inspired many acts of violence, most notoriously, the tragic Oklahoma City bombing in 1995, which killed 168 victims, and injured over 500 more.
Over the years, the NA has been linked to 14 known violent crimes as of 2005. By that time, they ended up losing many of their influential leaders, and fell out of relative influence until it was considered mostly defunct.
However, that didn’t stop Robert Ransdell from putting his own time into trying to organize the hate organization further, until the accident in 2018.
Emily Sherry was arrested and convicted for the accident.
Due to her high BAC of 0.422 — a BAC that is high enough to be potentially deadly and hard for most people to even reach — she was undoubtably completely under the influence and was charged with DUI the same day.
Originally, she was charged with murder, but she plead guilty to and was convicted of first-degree manslaughter.
(It is important to correct that, while Walker claims in her TikTok that Sherry was ultimately convicted of the murder charge, news sources say that she was convicted of first-degree manslaughter instead.)
Sherry was sentenced to 17 and a half years in prison.
Today, the public reaction is still mixed.
Many people in the comments had a hard time responding to the situation.
On one hand, most of the commentors were quick to admonish her choice to drive while drunk, but on the other hand, just as many found Ransdell’s own actions and beliefs just as dangerous.
Nobody wanted to fully commit to one side, for worry of condoning drunken driving or condoning white supremacy.
Overall, people did their best to condemn both at once, although many are less worried about being impartial about the accident.
Amanda Hartmann is a writer and editorial intern at YourTango who writes on news and entertainment.