A Texas teenager has been awarded a staggering $3.2 million jury verdict after a classmate’s mom fueled viral social media claims that he was a racist bully when he was just “doing immature, dumb things.”
Asher Vann, now 19, was accused of racially motivated bullying after he and several other 8th graders were filmed duping their middle school classmate SeMarion Humphrey, who is black, into drinking his own urine during a birthday sleepover in Plano in 2021.
The classmate’s mom, Summer Smith, quickly went public with the race-based claims, alleging at the time that Vann and his cohort had also hurled slurs and shot her then-13-year-old son with a BB gun in the racially motivated attack.
But a jury last week ruled that Smith’s accusations, as well as the subsequent viral narrative that exploded after the teen was outed on social media, had invaded Vann’s privacy and forced him to endure severe emotional distress.
“This wasn’t me doing a racist act. This isn’t me hating someone because of their skin color. This was me at an immature stage of my life at a sleepover for my birthday, doing immature, dumb things,” Vann, who is now a college freshman, told WFAA in the wake of the jury’s ruling.
“It was immature. It was stupid. It was nasty. But that’s not who I am, and that’s not me today.”
The claims stemmed from a birthday sleepover that took place in February 2021, where Humphrey alleged his classmates at Haggard Middle School shot him with BB guns during a frog hunting before later being tricked into drinking urine.
A Snapchat video of the incident quickly went viral and attracted national media attention, igniting calls for the teens involved to be charged and expelled from school.
Police investigated the saga but never arrested or charged anyone.
Vann later filed a lawsuit against Smith and her attorney, Kim Cole, alleging they ruined his life with a smear campaign that led to widespread public outrage.
Jurors subsequently ruled that Smith and Cole should pay the teen $3.2 million in damages.
Despite the legal victory, Vann stressed that his life had already been defined by the case.
“There was no winner in the end,” he said.
“Things are getting better,” he added. “But I don’t feel like I am who I should’ve been at this age because of that.”
Smith, meanwhile, has already said she plans to appeal the verdict on behalf of her son.
“Defending my son was what I should have done. And I would defend my son still,” Smith said. “I feel that the acts were vile. And I feel like that was my opinion of the act. The urinate in a cup, to put it to someone’s lips to have them drink it, is vile.”
The mother admitted, though, she was “saddened” about the abuse Vann has copped over the years.
“I never wanted anyone to threaten anyone at the school or anything. I simply wanted them to be held accountable in the proper way,” she claimed.