The FBI is investigating an incident involving a Black Indiana man and a group of white people who pinned him to a tree in what he called an “attempted lynching."
On Wednesday, a spokeswoman for the FBI confirmed an investigation was taking place but refrained from sharing additional details, The New York Times reported.
Vauhxx Booker told the Indianapolis Star that he and other witnesses showed videos to the investigators at the scene following the incident, but the officers initially decided not to make any arrests.
"I don't have a doubt that if it would have been five Black men who had attacked a white man, they would have been in jail that night," Booker told the outlet.
Booker added that conservation officers from the Department of Natural Resources, who have yet to arrest anyone in connection to the incident, “left a clear and present danger loose in our community."
The department, however, confirmed it is conducting an investigation into “a battery that was partially captured on video Saturday at Lake Monroe,” per the Star.
Booker's lawyer Katherine Liell said the case was being investigated as a possible hate crime.
“We want this investigated as a hate crime. It was clearly racially motivated,” she said.
On July 5, Booker wrote a lengthy Facebook post describing the incident that included videos his friends at the scene were able to capture. He shared how difficult it was to relive the experience on social media but that he hopes his story will help prevent future hate crimes.
“I don’t want to recount this, but I was almost the victim of an attempted lynching. I don’t want this to have happened to me or anyone. It hurts my soul, and my pride, but there are multiple witnesses and it can’t be hidden or avoided,” Booker wrote. “On July 4th evening others and me were victims of what I would describe as a hate crime. I was attacked by five white men (with confederate flags) who literally threatened to lynch me in front of numerous witnesses.”
Booker said the incident began with him and his friends planning to go view the lunar eclipse on Independence Day. He said that on the way into Lake Monroe, the group crossed paths with a person he described as “a large white male (seemingly drunk) wearing an oversized hat with a confederate flag print on it.”
In the post, Booker wrote that the man followed them on an ATV and told them that they were on private property. Once Booker’s group made it inside the park, they told an event organizer about the encounter and were told the individual they ran into wasn’t the property owner.
Booker and his group advised those joining them to use the public route to their location so they could avoid any issues. Booker said the group with the white man had blocked off the public path with a boat and ATVs. When people trying to join Booker’s group approached the beach, he said they were assailed with “White power” chants. These chants, as well as those of "Get a noose," can be heard in the video.
Things escalated when Booker tried to “smooth things over” with the men. He wrote that “two of them jumped me from behind” at first. Then, a scuffle ensued on the ground, and more of the assailants jumped into the fray.
“The five were able to easily overwhelm me and got me to the ground and dragged me pinning my body against a tree as they began pounding on my head and ripped off some of my hair, with several of them still on top of my body holding me down," Booker wrote.
"They held me pinned and continued beating me for several minutes seemingly become [sic] more and more enraged as they kept trying to seriously injure me and failing," he continued. "At one point during the attack one of the men jumped on my neck. I could feel both his feet and his full bodyweight land hard against my neck."
The 36-year-old said he was only let go after several other strangers, who also happened to be white, came to his aid. Yahoo News reports Booker suffered a concussion and sustained other injuries.
Social media users uncovered the identities of the men alleged to have attacked Booker, and the company where two of them were employed was bombarded with negative comments and reviews Monday, Yahoo reported.
Yesterday, these white supremacist fucks attacked a black man at Lake Monroe in Bloomington, IN. We want their faces to go viral. We want to know who they are. Twitter, do your thing. pic.twitter.com/XGPBUmRamI
— ???????????????? ???????????????????????????????????????????? (@YDSABloomington) July 5, 2020
Bloomington Mayor John Hamilton said Booker, a community activist, is someone he has grown to know well in the last five years. With Indiana’s history with the Ku Klux Klan, Hamilton admitted that there’s still work to do to heal and restore justice to its Black communities.
“We’re a very progressive city. We believe in inclusion, but in our community we know we have hate incidents every year. We know there’s racism in our community and around our community, and we can’t pretend that’s not the case,” Hamilton told Yahoo.
Booker's assault comes after a series of suspicious hanging deaths of Black people throughout the nation, a number of which were deemed suicides, as Blavity previously reported.
