Officials say the three UAlbany students who claimed they were attacked on a CDTA bus last month are now facing charges.

Ariel Agudio, Alexis Briggs, and Asha Burwell, all 20, will be charged with third-degree assault.

The African-American students had said they were attacked by a group of white people and were called racial slurs. However, some questioned those claims after cell phone video surfaced. Agudio and Burwell are charged with falsely reporting an incident. And the three young women are accused of attacking a 19-year-old bus passenger that night.

UAlbany police interviewed 35 passengers on the bus, reviewed videotape from 12 security camera videos on the bus and reviewed four videos taken by passengers on their cell phones during the three-week investigation.

UAlbany police says their evidence shows Agudio, Briggs and Burwell were actually the aggressors in the fight, and that they continued to assault the victim despite the efforts of several passengers to stop them.

Investigators say they also found no evidence to support the initial allegations that the three women were targeted because of race, and no evidence that racial slurs were directed toward them, based on audio recordings from the bus.

Hundreds attended a rally in support of the women immediately after the incident. But tensions escalated on campus after some who were on the bus came forward, and said things did not happen as the women claimed.

Each is due in court on Monday morning.

Albany Police Chief Frank Wiley said Thursday afternoon:

"The evidence shows that, contrary to how the defendants originally portrayed things, these three individuals were not the victims of a crime. Rather, we allege that they are the perpetrators..."

"I especially want to point out that what happened on the bus was not a ‘hate crime.’ We spent a great deal of time carefully reviewing the audio recordings to determine whether any racial slurs were used. The only person we heard uttering racial epithets was one of the defendants.

And it is important to note that no witness reported hearing any racial slurs directed at the defendants. And those witnesses were people from a variety of racial and ethnic backgrounds.”

UAlbany President Robert Jones, who had called initially for swift justice in the case released a statement about the women's arrests, saying:

“I have been informed of the outcomes of the investigation into the incident on the CDTA bus on January 30th. I want to thank the University Police Department for doing a careful and thorough job, and I want to thank the community and our students, faculty and staff for being patient as this investigation took place.

This matter is now in the hands of the criminal justice system. I look forward to the resolution of this case."