Wichita police say they will not file charges stemming from a widely circulated video of a Republican House candidate jumping on an apparently unconscious woman lying on a bed and then holding a pillow over her face.
Aaron Moses, a captain and executive officer for the Wichita Police Department, issued a statement addressing the video of Kyler Sweely that was broadly circulated to reporters and posted on social media platforms in recent weeks.
“On Oct. 21, 2024, Wichita Police investigators were contacted regarding two video clips that the reporting party received in July of 2023 from an unnamed individual,” Moses said in the statement.
“The Domestic Intervention and Violence Reduction Team followed up on these videos, contacting all the involved parties. Based on the interviews conducted no charges will be filed at this time,” Moses said.
The Sunflower State Journal obtained the statement late Thursday after it was first published by The Wichita Eagle earlier in the day, although the video has been talked about extensively in political circles for a couple of weeks.
An investigator from the Wichita Police Department contacted the woman, who confirmed that she was the person on the bed in the video, according to a police report.
The woman, who was clothed in the video, told police no crime had taken place. She did not consider herself a victim.
The woman told police that she recalled going out with Sweely and state Rep. Avery Anderson said “they were friends who had been drinking and ‘just having fun’ in the videos.” The report indicates that the video was made last year.
The report also indicated that the Anderson’s voice could be heard in the video along with Sweely and the woman.
Anderson confirmed for police it was his voice that was heard in the video encouraging Sweely to leap into the bed according to the report.
But in an interview early Thursday night, Anderson said the initial report was wrong.
He said he asked for the report to be amended to indicate someone else took the video and that he was not in the room when the recording was made.
“I definitely 100% did not take the video and that is not my voice,” Anderson said. “When the video was taken, I was not in the room.”
Last week, Sweely, who served five years as a sergeant in the Army and worked most recently as staffer for a House committee, attacked the distribution of the video as a “political smear.”
“I’m honestly disappointed to see politics come to this – to take some old videos from a double date with friends — just us hanging out and being silly — and now attempt to twist them and use them against me to score political points,” Sweely posted.
“It’s creepy that someone held onto these videos for years just to take them out of context for someone’s political gain,” Sweely wrote.
“I’ve always tried to treat people with respect, and twisting these moments is not only wrong but also an insult to real victims.”
Sweely is locked in a tough race for the House District 102 seat against Democratic Rep. Jason Probst of Hutchinson where nothing less than breaking the Republican supermajority could be on the line.
Probst said that he received a copy of the video clips – one is about two seconds and the other is about seven seconds – on about Oct. 14 and sent them to Wichita Police Department because he thought a crime might have occurred and believed it was the “responsible thing to do.”
Based on what he read in the police report, Probst said he thought someone else turned the videos over to police as well.
Probst is seeking a third term in the House, doing something rare for a Democrat, winning in a district carried by former President Donald Trump.
Probst edged past Republican John Whitesel by 31 votes in 2020 and beat him again with 52% of the vote in 2022.
The district’s voter composition is 35.3% Republican, 24.2% Democratic and 38.8% unaffiliated.
Earlier in the campaign, Sweely’s candidacy to run for the Legislature was challenged because it was argued that he didn’t live at his stated residence at 306th E. Seventh Ave. in Hutchinson.
Robin Jackson, the secretary of the Reno County Republican Party, said she drove by the house and it appeared to be vacant with knee-high grass and covered windows.
But the State Objections Board ultimately upheld his residency after he documented that he signed a lease to move into that location on May 29, two days before he filed to run for the House.
