The mayor of Bloomington, Indiana, is speaking out against a racial attack involving one of his black residents who claims he was the victim of an attempted lynching over the weekend at a nearby lake.
Video of the incident, which shows a group of white people appearing to pin a black man against a tree, has gone viral. The man in the video, Vauhxx Rush Booker, says he was “almost the victim of an attempted lynching,” and says one of the white men seen in the video yelled, “get the noose” multiple times. Indiana police are currently investigating.
“Sunday night, I saw videos on social media that showed a member of my community, somebody I know, experiencing just horrific violence attacks, terrifying to watch, no doubt 100 times worse to be in, terrible racial epithets, conflict really angering me, also infuriating me,” said Bloomington Mayor John Hamilton. “I learned through the video and then subsequent activities that there had been a conflict not in my city, but near my city at a lake in a state controlled area of this kind of awful, racial hatred erupting.”
Hamilton said he knows Booker as he is a “very active” member of the community, according to Yahoo News. Hamilton said he wants to stop this kind of thing from ever happening.
“It’s a terrible reminder that racism– we’re a very progressive city, democratic city, progressive, liberal. We believe in inclusion.
But in our community, we know we have hate incidents every year. We know there is racism in our community and around our community. And we can’t pretend that’s not the case,” Hamilton said.
He continued, “I don’t know what would have happened in the woods alone around Lake Monroe if there hadn’t been other individuals there, if there hadn’t been a video taken. We pray that any terrible episode, horrific interaction like this, ends at least with as little violence as possible. There is obviously violence, but I don’t know what would have happened.”
No arrests had been made as of Monday night. We’ll keep you posted on this one.
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