Story About Black Student Terrorized by White Classmates in Texas is a Hoax

Story About Black Student Terrorized by White Classmates in Texas is a Hoax

This story was pushed heavily by the media, of course. It was just another hoax.

The Washington Free Beacon reports:

Mainstream Media Breathlessly Covered an Alleged Hate Crime in Which White Kids Forced a Black Classmate To Drink Urine. It Was a Giant Hoax.

It was a story that received blanket media coverage in March 2021. It alleged that white middle schoolers in Plano, Texas, viciously “tortured” SeMarion Humphrey, their black classmate, forcing him to drink their urine at a sleepover as they shot him with BB guns. A Black Lives Matter activist group charged the local public school district with doing “nothing” to stop “this racially motivated hate crime” as violent protests broke out outside the home of Asher Vann, the white child alleged to have organized the brutal attack.

Major media outlets, including NBC, CBS, CNN, Business Insider, People magazine, the Daily Mail, and the Dallas Morning News, pounced on the story as Humphrey, his mother Summer Smith, and their attorney Kim Cole, embarked on a media tour where they called Vann “evil.” The trio appeared on Good Morning America, where ABC host Linsey Davis promoted a GoFundMe account that raised nearly $120,000 to help pay for Humphrey’s “therapy and private schooling.”

Racial activist groups added fuel to the fire. The NAACP dressed down the leaders of the Plano school district in a town hall that they described as the beginning of an “open partnership” spurred by the alleged hate crime. The Next Generation Action Network, a Black Lives Matter-tied group whose leader alleged Humphrey was “tortured for days” by his white assailants, organized public marches that drew hundreds of protesters.

And then, a little under five years later, a racially diverse Texas jury—including four black members—ruled the whole thing was a hoax.

On Jan. 22, Texas district court judge Benjamin Smith ordered Smith and Cole to pay $3.2 million in damages to Vann, now an adult attending his first year of college, for intentionally smearing him and tarnishing his future earning potential during their media tour in 2021. The ruling followed a civil trial in October 2025, where the jury determined that Cole and Smith cooked up the scheme to raise their public profiles during the height of the Black Lives Matter movement and to rake in money through GoFundMe.

Court records show that Smith put less than $1,000 of the nearly $120,000 GoFundMe windfall toward her son’s schooling. Account statements reviewed by the Washington Free Beacon show the remaining funds were spent on luxuries, including a designer dog, dining and travel, beauty products, liquor, vapes, cell phones, car payments, and rent.

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