Five college students in Massachusetts are accused of luring a man to the Assumption University campus in a plot that the police said was inspired by the television show “To Catch a Predator” and a fad on TikTok. The students were part of a larger group that chased the man from a campus building after he was invited there by a student on the dating app, Tindr, expecting to meet an adult, according to a criminal complaint issued in Worcester District Court on Dec. 4. The campus police at Assumption University, a small Catholic school in Worcester, said in the complaint that the group accused the man of being a sexual predator, stopped him from leaving a student lounge and recorded the episode as part of a “deliberately staged event.”Two students assaulted the man, the police said. There was no indication that the man was trying to meet underage girls and the woman who invited him to the campus, Kelsy Brainard, 18, said on her Tindr profile that she was 18 years old, the police said. The police did not provide the man’s age.

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Persons: Kelsy Brainard Organizations: Assumption University Locations: Massachusetts, Worcester