A Trooper Punched a Passenger and Pulled Him by His Dreadlocks. Then the Internet Decided He Was Kai Cenat.

Within hours of a dashcam clip going viral out of Blytheville, Arkansas, thousands of people were convinced they were watching Twitch's biggest star get pulled out of a car by his dreadlocks and punched by a state trooper. They weren't. The man in the video isn't Kai Cenat — he's a 23-year-old former Division I basketball player named Tedrick Washington, and he wasn't even driving the car.

The mix-up is almost a footnote next to what's actually on the video. A trooper broke a car window with a baton, pulled a backseat passenger out by his hair, and punched him twice, once standing and once on the ground. The passenger wasn't the one who led police on a 130-mph chase. He was just in the back seat.

The clip making the rounds, reposted widely including by the Instagram account @african.and.black.echo, has pulled in more than 11,000 likes and over 2,000 comments. The caption is blunt: a trooper broke a window and dragged a passenger out by his dreadlocks after a chase that hit 130 mph. Its framing is pointed: 'He wasn't the driver. He was the passenger.' It ends by asking followers whether the force used was justified.

According to records and reporting from NEA Report, which covers Arkansas State Police pursuits in the region, the chase started on the night of August 19 when a trooper clocked a 2023 Infiniti QX50 doing 82 mph in a 60 zone on Arkansas 18, near the Big Lake bridge. When the trooper turned on his lights, the driver sped up instead of stopping. Speeds climbed to 113 mph, then past 130. Blytheville police laid spike strips near County Road 239. The SUV kept going on a deflating tire, ran a red light, and was finally stopped after officers used a tactical vehicle intervention near North 16th and West Walnut.

The driver, 25-year-old Adonerus Johnson, was arrested and is facing felony fleeing, DWI, reckless driving, resisting arrest and several other charges. In the back seat was Washington. Video from the stop shows Trooper Theodore Henderson ordering him out of the car, then breaking the rear window with a baton. Henderson grabbed Washington by the wrist and by his dreadlocks, pulled him toward the broken window, and punched him in the face. The struggle continued on the ground, where Henderson hit him a second time.

Here's the part that complicates a clean story either way. Washington was arrested too, charged with obstruction of governmental operations and resisting arrest, both far lighter than the driver's charge sheet, but not nothing. NEA Report notes that the released records don't include an Arkansas State Police administrative finding on Henderson's use of force, or a formal statement from Washington himself. So the honest version isn't 'innocent bystander brutalized for no reason,' and it isn't 'passenger got what he had coming' either. It's a passenger charged with resisting, pulled out by his hair, and hit twice by an officer whose own account, according to NEA Report's review of the released footage, doesn't appear to fully match what the video shows.

Almost as soon as the clip started spreading, it picked up a second, completely separate life: a large chunk of the internet decided the man being pulled through the window was Kai Cenat, the Twitch streamer with one of the largest live audiences online. The resemblance, mostly the dreadlocks, was apparently enough. Once one account tagged the video with his name, it spread the way anything with a famous name attached spreads: fast, and past the point where anyone was checking. A second wave of skeptics then called the whole video fake or AI-generated, which, ironically, kept the confusion circulating even longer.

Kai Cenat never addressed the video publicly. He didn't need to, because he wasn't in it. The man in the footage is Tedrick Washington Jr., a Blytheville native who played Division I college basketball, not a streamer with millions of followers. It's a strange kind of footnote to a serious story: a real use-of-force incident going viral partly because of a case of mistaken celebrity identity that had nothing to do with what actually happened on that road.

Washington's own account hasn't appeared in the records NEA Report reviewed, but he has reportedly told other outlets he was complying with the trooper's orders and is preparing to pursue legal action over how he was treated. That's his account, not an independently confirmed fact, but it lines up with the throughline running through most of the coverage: the driver's role in the chase itself isn't seriously in dispute, while what happened to the passenger once the car actually stopped is the part still being argued over.

CONFIRMED: the chase happened on August 19 near Blytheville, Arkansas, reaching speeds over 130 mph. Trooper Theodore Henderson broke the SUV's rear window, pulled Washington out by his wrist and hair, and punched him twice. Washington was charged with obstruction and resisting arrest, while driver Adonerus Johnson faces far more serious charges including felony fleeing and DWI. The video's spread was amplified by a widespread, false belief that the passenger was Kai Cenat.

ALLEGATION: Washington's claim that he was complying and is planning legal action, reported by other outlets but not confirmed by the records NEA Report reviewed. UNVERIFIED: whether Arkansas State Police has opened or completed any internal review of Henderson's use of force. No administrative finding had been made public as of publication.

Strip away the Kai Cenat detour, and this is still a real, documented moment where a trooper broke a window and pulled a passenger out by his hair on camera, the kind of video that would have gone viral on the strength of what's actually in it. The mistaken-identity spiral just made sure a lot more people saw it before anyone had the full picture.