Brandi Yakeima Lasiter, the woman who went viral for bragging about knowingly infecting sexual partners with HIV, is now backtracking and saying she lied.
Blood test results on the resident of Americus, Georgia also came back negative for the sexually transmitted infection.
Viral Video Sparks Police Involvement
Lasiter made waves on social media after she had posted a Facebook Live video claiming that she's been intentionally passing on HIV to multiple partners. In the expletive-filled one-minute video, she specified the number of men she knowingly infected as well as their respective partners.
"I always get the last laugh," Lasiter stated in the video. "Now you're all sick as [expletive], right along with me."
According to Major Herman Lamar of the Americus police, their department received several tips from various people when the video was released on Friday, Aug. 2. One of the men that Lasiter named in the video approached the police to file a communication harassment complaint.
No HIV After All
After gaining national attention and police involvement, Lasiter backtracked and explained that she's not infected by HIV after all. During interviews with the police, the Georgia woman showed officers the results of a blood test in September 2018 that indicated she doesn't have the sexually transmitted virus.
"She stated she was angry at the people named in the video when she posted it," Lamar told AP News.
Lasiter voluntarily agreed to take another blood test. According to a report from WRBL, test results came back negative for HIV.
It is a felony punishable by up to 10 years to knowingly transmit HIV in the state of Georgia, but since Lasiter has proven that she's not infected, she cannot be charged for it. Instead, she is getting charged with a misdemeanor count of Harassing Communications.
According to AIDSvu, 51,350 people from Georgia are living with HIV in 2016 and 772 people died of the infection in the same year. In 2017, there were 2,588 newly diagnosed cases in the state.
A Similar Case
A few weeks ago in July 2019, Rasheem Ikey Bodiford from Pensacola, Florida was sentenced to 10 years in prison for failing to disclose to his partners that he's HIV positive.
Bodiford, 27, knew about his HIV positive status since September 2016, according to the Pensacola News Journal. However, he went on to have sex with two women between September 2016 and October 2017, lying about his condition to one woman. This woman, who tested positive for HIV, spotted his HIV medication and confronted him, but Bodiford told her he was only selling the drug to his uncle.
