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.
Smith told the Free Beacon she plans on filing an appeal and insisted she told the truth about what happened to her son.
The story is hardly the only race hoax promoted by the media to crumble under scrutiny. The media provided fawning coverage to Jussie Smollett, the actor who orchestrated a fake hate crime against himself in 2019, drummed up outrage in 2020 that NASCAR driver Bubba Wallace, a black man who once drove a Black Lives Matter-themed car, was the target of a hate crime because he mistook what NASCAR determined was a pull rope for a noose, and looked the other way as the national Black Lives Matter group used the $80 million it raised during the George Floyd riots in 2020 to enrich the family and friends of its executives and to purchase mansions in Los Angeles and Canada.
Vann told the Free Beacon that none of the media outlets that covered the story in 2021 reached out to hear his side of events, even as their coverage incited nationwide outrage that led to violent protests outside his home.
“I was getting death threats from thousands of people on social media,” Vann said. “People leaked my address and my name. During one of the protests, they walked all the way to my house and threw bricks through my house.”
“It was scary,” Vann said. “These were adults, and I was in middle school at the time. Full-grown adults were rushing my house and causing harm to it. What if I was home and they saw me? They could have ripped me from my home and beaten me. It was very scary.”
Criminal charges were initially filed against Vann and his friends related to the BB gun allegations, but a grand jury declined to press charges. Plano Police Department officer Patricia McClure testified during a July 2025 deposition that she didn’t believe there was probable cause to bring the charges, which she only brought out of an abundance of caution amid the media firestorm.
What really happened, McClure testified, was that a group of eighth grade boys were left to their own devices during a big winter storm and acted immaturely. She said race was not a factor in any of the events that transpired against Humphrey during the fateful sleepover, a finding confirmed by Linda Washington, the black assistant principal at the middle school the boys attended who also investigated the incident.
Vann told the Free Beacon he was close friends with Humphrey during the weekend-long February 2021 sleepover, during which a big winter storm rolled over their town. One day, several of their other friends came by and, together, they all decided to go outside and “hunt frogs” with BB guns and airsoft rifles.
But no frogs were found. And so, with everyone geared up in bulky winter clothing and paintball masks, the children decided to play another game.
“We said, ‘Let’s test out the gear we brought,’” Vann recalled. “SeMarion was like, ‘Okay, shoot me. Test the mask.’ Then we all switched and took turns shooting each other. Everyone got shot and everyone shot someone.”
As for the allegation that Humphrey was forced to drink urine out of a cup, Vann said that, too, was portrayed in the wrong light. After the group willingly shot each other with their BB guns, they walked back to Vann’s house and decided, collectively, that the first one who fell asleep would get pranked.
“This one kid, he did a prank before where he pissed in a cup and gave it to his little brother,” Vann said. “I woke SeMarion up, handed him the cup. He put it up to his nose, but he didn’t drink it.”
“He put it up to his mouth, willingly and on his own accord, and gave it back because he knew it wasn’t water,” Vann said. “Nothing was forced. Everything his mom claimed happened was portrayed in the wrong light.”
Vann said there were no hard feelings between him and Humphrey for the following two weeks. It wasn’t until Smith caught wind of the incident in early March 2021 that things took a turn for the worse. Smith almost immediately retained Cole’s legal services, launched the GoFundMe, and took her version of the story to the press while falsely accusing the school district of ignoring the incident.
Vann’s attorney, Justin Nichols, said Smith maintained her version of events during the November trial, testifying on the witness stand that Vann was “evil.”
Cole saw another boost to her public profile in April 2025 when she briefly represented Karmelo Anthony, the 17-year-old black student who was charged with first-degree murder for fatally stabbing a white student at a high school track meet. Anthony’s family raised over $500,000 on GiveSendGo after Anthony’s father claimed in court that he had cash struggles as his bond was being set. Cole ceased representing Anthony shortly after he was released on bond, and as reports surfaced showing he was holed up in a $900,000 house with a brand new car in the driveway. Anthony’s trial is set for June 1, 2026.
Cole did not return a request for comment.
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