A white woman from Northfield, Illinois, who was arrested and charged with a hate crime after she initiated a confrontation between herself and a group of three black men in 2020, pleaded guilty to a lesser charge and was sentenced to probation. She told the three men they were not allowed to be at a public beach in Chicago because they were black.

Irene Donoshaytis, who was 65 at the time of her arrest, entered into a plea agreement, and the hate crime charge, which is a felony, was changed to a misdemeanor battery charge. She pleaded guilty to the misdemeanor charge in a Cook County Court, and the judge sentenced her to one year of probation.

When Donoshaytis signed the plea agreement, she also agreed to a requirement in the agreement that she would attend anti-racism classes. Initially, she was arrested and charged with battery; however, the charge was upgraded to hate crime by the state attorney’s office

According to the police, Donoshaytis, now 67, was accused of confronting Otis Campbell and two of his friends, who are also black, who were peacefully enjoying their day and riding their bicycles near a pier at Lake Michigan in Winnetka.

Campbell took out his phone and recorded their interaction with the woman. He uploaded the video to his Twitter account, which went viral, with many people in disbelief at what the woman had said to them.

The video shows Donoshaytis complaining to an employee of the Winnetka District Park and telling her that the three did not belong in the area and needed a pass to access the pier. The employee then told her that the men were on public property, that the beach was public property, and that no one needed a pass to get through.

Donoshaytis disagreed with the attendant and asked Campbell if he wanted to kill her and when Campbell said no, she told him that she felt he wanted to murder her.

Campbell then asked her why she thought he wanted to kill her and if it was because he was a black man, to which Donoshaytis brazenly replied, “yes,” while nodding her head.

She then charged at Campbell, trying to take his phone or knock it down, after which the recording stopped. Campbell told the police that the assailant hit him in the arm twice. He also said that the woman hurled some racist remarks at them, saying that this was America and that she was from Winnetka and they needed to go back to where they came from.

Campbell told authorities that the woman had confronted him, his cousin, and a friend, after they had completed a 15-mile bike ride from Skokie, a suburb near Winnetka, where he grew up.

At her first court appearance, Donoshaytis was prohibited from contacting Campbell or other witnesses, and the judge ordered her to surrender her passport. The judge set her bond at $10,000.

In 2020, Jeffrey Fagan, Donoshaytis’s attorney, said that she was a Soviet Union refugee and had fled her country because of persecution. He said the incident might have been a misunderstanding between the parties.