Creator Claims Ole Miss Student in Monkey Noise Video Is Tied to Auto Group Where Salesman Texted Black Customer an Ape

Ole Miss students caught on a Ring camera making monkey noises outside a Black classmate’s home are facing calls for expulsion, and now a creator online is claiming one of them is connected to a Wisconsin car dealership family with its own record of racist incidents.

The video was posted by Ole Miss student Jakiyra Metcalf, who shared doorbell footage of three young women outside her home making racial gestures and noises. Social media users have identified the women as Lauren Mayfield, Sara Whitehead and Alaina Kunes, and people have been flooding the University of Mississippi with emails demanding the school take action. The university has not publicly addressed the video.

That is where the new claim comes in. In a video circulating online, a creator said an anonymous source pointed her toward a connection between Alaina Kunes and the family behind Kunes Auto Group, a dealership company in Wisconsin. Baller Alert has not been able to confirm that Alaina Kunes is related to the family that owns the company, and neither she nor Kunes Auto Group has commented on the claim.

What is confirmed is the dealership’s track record.

Earlier this year, Carolyn Word, a Black woman from Milwaukee who had bought four vehicles from the Kunes dealership in Elkhorn, received a text from a salesman she had never dealt with. It contained an image of an ape dancing in a bikini.

“You send a customer, a good customer at that, a text message with, well, an ape on it. It’s definitely racial,” Word said.

She described feeling humiliated, furious and violated. “It just made me feel terrible that someone would portray me as an ape,” she said, adding that she will never go back.

The company told TMJ4 the salesman was no longer with them. “Ultimately, it was a disgusting act, and that employee is no longer with us at this time,” the dealership said.

It was not the first time a Kunes location made headlines for racism. In 2025, Makayla Starks, a biracial woman, found the N word printed on an oil change sticker on her windshield after a visit to the Kunes Buick GMC dealership in Oak Creek. Kunes blamed a former employee at the time.

Word and Starks are both represented by civil rights attorney William Sulton, who did not hold back about his reaction when Word came to him.

“Oh, here we go again, right? I mean, it’s Kunes,” Sulton said. “It’s racist conduct and no apology, no follow through.”

Sulton called the ape image common racist imagery that everyone knows is wrong. He and Word are now pushing for Kunes Auto Group to require anti-racism training for every employee.

“We know that if you don’t train and retrain on this, then this kind of misbehavior will happen,” Sulton said.

The creator who resurfaced the Kunes incidents connected them directly to the Ole Miss video, suggesting it shows where the student “gets her humor from,” and said the people involved need to be held accountable and educated. Until the family tie is confirmed, it remains her claim.

Meanwhile, the pressure on Ole Miss is not letting up, as people online continue to demand that the university identify the students and respond to Metcalf’s video.