Woman Charging With a Knife

About

Woman Charging With a Knife refers to a still image from the bodycam footage of a Fairfax County police officer in Virginia shooting a tall woman wearing a robe and screaming while charging at him with a knife in hand. The assailant, 33-year-old Sydney Wilson, was fatally shot by the officer during the encounter, while the cop suffered a slash wound to his head. In mid-October 2024, after the bodycam footage was released, the image, along with several other photos from the incident, went viral online as it became an exploitable meme and was edited and used in caption memes.

Origin

On September 16th, 2014, a Fairfax County police officer in Virginia fatally shot a woman who assaulted him in an apartment complex during a welfare check. The assailant was identified as 33-year-old Sydney Wilson.^[1]

On October 14th, 2024, bodycam footage of the incident was released. The video shows a tall woman approaching the officer with the knife as he commands her to back off. After the woman charges and slashes at the officer, wounding him in the face, he responds by opening fire with his handgun, fatally injuring her. The officer reports the incident and calls for backup and medical assistance as his blood is seen dripping in front of the camera. The video garnered over 213,000 views on YouTube^[2] in one day (censored version from Inside Edition shown below).

On October 14th, 2024, the X^[3] account @Police_Activity posted a still image from the video showing the woman grimacing and charging the officer with a knife in her hand as he points a handgun at her. The post (shown below) garnered over 20 reposts and 220 likes in one day.

Spread

On October 14th, 2024, the video and the still image saw viral spread online as multiple accounts made posts about the incident. For example, on October 14th, influencer and Twitter / X user Andy Ngo posted the video and the image, with the posts garnering over 15,000 reposts and 136,000 likes and 1,200 reposts and 17,000 likes, respectively, on X^[4][5] in one day.

Later that day, the X^[6] account @EndWokeness posted the image along with a photograph of the injured officer, with the post gaining over 20,000 reposts and 218,000 likes in one day.

Starting on the same day, users on X and 4chan posted caption memes and edits based on the image. For example, on October 14th, 2024, X^[7] user @RichardRatBoy1 captioned the image, "New COD Zombies looks crazy," with the post accumulating over 1,100 reposts and 26,000 likes in one day (shown below).

Multiple memes in which the woman was edited to look like the Concord character Buzz, a knife-wielding fighter in the video game, were shared on 4chan and later on X. On October 14th, an anonymous 4chan^[8] user posted one such edit in a /pol/ thread (shown below).

Additionally, memes based on other still images from the footage, as well as video edits, were spread online. For example, on October 14th, 2024, X^[9] user @TheOnlyDSC shared a Doom edit of the attack created by an unknown user that garnered over 2 million views, 5,700 reposts and 44,000 likes in a day. The incident was also referenced in various memes, including Soyjak edits.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References