Local police departments say they were not involved in the
alleged handcuffing of a University student who said she was verbally and
physically attacked while crossing the Washington Avenue Bridge in a Facebook
post Wednesday.

On Facebook and Twitter, the University of Minnesota Police
Department and the Minneapolis Police Department said there were no
records of the incident Kathy Mirah Tu described in her Facebook post.

In the widely-shared post, Tu said she was harassed by a white
male on the bridge.

“I was stop[ped] in my [tracks] by a white male, who
yelled at me to ‘Go back to Asia.’ … I pretended to not hear anything
and continue[d] on walking since I didn’t want to create conflict,” Tu,
who noted she is Asian-American, wrote in the post on her personal Facebook
page. “Shortly after that moment, I was stopped by that same man who told
me ‘Don’t you know it’s disrespectful to walk away from someone when they are
talking to you?”

In her post, Tu wrote that the man grabbed her wrist
and threatened to fight her, so she punched him in the throat.

“His friends who were watching the entire situation go
down saw that I was going to the win fight and came over to his rescue and
accused me of assaulting him and called the police,” she wrote.

She said police handcuffed her, checked her criminal
history and let her go with a warning.

In a tweet Thursday afternoon, UMPD said they did not
respond to the incident and asked Tu to contact police. “UMPD
was not involved but want to talk to the female who posted this on social
media,” the tweet said.

Minneapolis police also asked anyone with information to
come forward.

University alumna Sandy Moua circulated a petition in
reaction to the
alleged incident that garnered 592 signatures as of Sunday
evening. It calls for University administrators, Board of Regents and police to
condemn hateful actions on campus, suspend faculty and students accused of
racism and mandate a buddy system between campus security and students — among
other requests.

“While we recognize that the University of Minnesota is
a complicated system, we know that if you have the power to dismantle General
College (Spring 2005), revamp the Multicultural Center for Academic Excellence
and raise tuition by 53% since 2004 then you can certainly enact these policies
and procedures swiftly,” the petition read.

Tu’s Facebook post had more than 17,000 shares and 30,000
reactions as of Thursday evening.

Tu didn’t respond to multiple requests for comment. On
Friday morning, Tu’s post became unavailable. Later that morning, Tu’s Facebook
account appeared to have been deleted.

Tu’s allegation comes amid a wave of similar stories of
racially motivated attacks. In one other case, a Muslim college student in
Louisiana who claimed she was attacked admitted that the story was fabricated.

Chris Aadland
contributed to this report.