The Miami-Dade Police Department reported that influencer Nikita Dragun was taken into custody Monday night at a hotel in Miami and charged with criminal assault on a police officer.
With 27 million followers across YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok, transgender 26-year-old Dragun is well-known online for her posts about her transition, makeup, and fashion.
Requests for feedback from her agents were not immediately fulfilled.
Dragun has been documenting her stay in Miami for the past week on social media, including at The Goodtime Hotel on Miami Beach. Just after 6 o’clock in the evening, police officers responded to a complaint from a rowdy customer there. Monday, according to the arrest document given to NBC News.
She had allegedly been “creating a ruckus and being highly unruly,” including “going around the pool area unclothed,” according to the affidavit from hotel security to police investigators. Dragun splashed water on a hotel employee, and when confronted, the security guard claimed to be a police officer.
The affidavit claimed that when police got to Dragun’s hotel room, they could hear loud music coming from inside. She answered the door when the officers knocked and identified themselves as Miami Beach police, according to the affidavit, and was informed by the hotel security who was with them that she could be led out of the building.
Dragun closed the door, then opened it again and questioned, “Do you want more?” The statement said that she then threw an open water bottle at the employees and police, causing the water to hit and pour on a security guard and one of the officers.
The influencer, who is Belgian-born and rose to fame around 2015, has accumulated tens of millions of social media followers for her videos and makeup tips. By going to COVID-era events and releasing a song called “DICK,” in which she put memes with the song’s title over the faces of other trans people, she has also courted controversy.
