Thursday, July 9, 2020 | Indiana Daily Student | idsnews.com
FBI to investigate Booker’s attack
IDS
By Lilly St. Angelo lstangel@iu.edu | @lilly_st_ang
SAM HOUSE | IDS
A protester holds up a sign July 6 in front of the Charlotte Zietlow Justice Center. Vauhxx Booker was the victim of a racist attack July 4 near Monroe Lake.
‘I didn’t want to be another hashtag’ Vauhxx Booker attacked at Monroe Lake on Saturday By Lilly St. Angelo lstangel@iu.edu | @lilly_st_ang
The Monroe County Prosecutor's Office is investigating an assault on Vauhxx Booker, a Monroe County human rights commissioner. Booker, who is Black, and others online are calling the partially videotaped encounter an attempted lynching. The encounter happened on the evening of the Fourth of July near Monroe Lake, and Booker posted about it on Facebook on Sunday. In the post, he said he was jumped from behind by men with confederate flags from a group that had been blocking people getting to a campsite for a lunar eclipse event that Booker was attending, claiming to own the land, and yelling “white power.” Booker said the group then pinned him to a tree and attacked him, hitting his head, ripping his hair out and at one point, jumping on his neck. Booker and witnesses said one of the people said “get a noose” and other racist slurs. The videos posted with the story on Facebook show multiple people pinning Booker against a tree while he’s on all fours and men yelling racist slurs while flipping off people videotaping them. Booker was the only Black person in his group of friends. “When they saw a Black man is when they went into a rage of racist slurs,” Booker’s lawyer Katharine Liell said. Witness Steven Cox said Booker’s neck was being held against the tree by the group of people, and they were holding him down by his hair. Cox and several of the others who went looking for Booker after he did not return to the campsite were threatened for filming the scene. The people assaulting Booker took Cox’s phone away. “They were telling us all to leave and they were going to keep him,” Cox said. Booker called 911 after the people who arrived at the scene got the attackers off of him. Witnesses say it took one to two hours for Department of Natural Re-
PHOTO COURTESY OF KIP MAY
Vauhxx Booker is a human rights advocate and part of the Monroe County Affordable Housing Advisory Commission. Booker was diagnosed with a minor concussion, abrasions, bruises and some ripped out hair patches after being attacked on the evening of the Fourth of July near Monroe Lake.
sources officers to respond. Liell said although witnesses did experience trauma and their timelines may not be reliable, video evidence shows the sun had gone down by the time the DNR officers arrived. The encounter occurred around 7 to 7:30 p.m. and sunset was 9:16 p.m. Saturday. The officers did not make any arrests upon arrival, which Liell said is standard if the officers did not witness the attack. When this happens, the prosecutor decides whether arrest warrants should be issued after hearing the officers’ reports. However, Liell said officers did not attempt to collect the video evidence that witnesses had, and she said she believes the prosecutor's office was misled to believe the encounter was less serious than it was. “Obviously the police weren’t
taking it very seriously,” Liell said. She said the prosecutor’s office called in the two DNR officers who responded to the incident to question them this morning. Liell said she is also attempting to work with the prosecutor’s office to provide evidence, videos and names of witnesses. She said from her experience in criminal law, arrest warrants will be issued soon. Booker said in an interview Sunday night that he and his friends, who had gathered at a beachfront campsite on public property to watch the lunar eclipse Saturday night, did not end up staying the night because they felt unsafe. Cox said DNR officers gave people boat rides back across the lake so they did not have to walk past the other group of people again. On Sunday afternoon, Booker
went to the emergency room when he continued to experience symptoms of a concussion. He said he was diagnosed with a minor concussion, abrasions, bruises and some ripped out hair patches. The ER doctor contacted the DNR with his diagnosis. “It’s disturbing, it comes in waves,” Booker said about his mental processing of the incident. “There was a moment when someone said, ‘don’t kill him.’” He said he has thought about the many other Black people who must have listened to people discuss their murders right in front of them and not lived to tell the story. “I didn’t want to be another hashtag,” Booker said. He said he has no doubt that if he had attacked someone the way he was attacked, he would have been arrested. The DNR has jurisdiction over Monroe Lake and recently received public criticism after another racially charged event. DNR officers arrested a man who allegedly was interfering with an investigation into a complaint made by boaters who were flying a Trump flag. They reported a boat of IU football players after the players yelled profanities at them. The players, who were black, claimed they were racially profiled. Bloomington Mayor John Hamilton issued a joint statement with city clerk Nicole Bolden denouncing the assault and another alleged racial profiling by a sheriff deputy who arrested a Black resident walking on his/her street during the Fourth of July weekend. “On behalf of the City of Bloomington, we would like to express outrage and grief relating to two apparent racially motivated incidents reported in our community over the July 4 weekend,” the statement said. “These separate incidents exemplify the persistence of racism and bias in our country and our own community. They deserve nothing less than our collective condemnation.” Booker’s case is still under investigation, and no documents are publicly available at this time.
The FBI opened an investigation into the Fourth of July attack on Vauhxx Booker, according to an announcement by his attorney Katharine Liell on Tuesday afternoon at the Courthouse Square. The case will be investigated as a hate crime, Liell said. “I can tell you as a criminal lawyer of over 30 years, I never thought I would say, ‘Boy am I glad the FBI are coming,’ but we are,” she said. “We want this investigated as a hate crime. It was clearly racially motivated.” Bloomington Mayor John Hamilton was also present and expressed his support for Booker and for the investigation. “My job is to help protect my residents,” Hamilton said. “I am sorry for what happened to Mr. Booker, and I am going to cooperate fully to make sure justice is done.” Hamilton said he and Booker don’t always agree on everything, but they agree on the need for justice. Booker was at the courthouse as well and talked about using the platform he has been given to better the community. He said the name Vauhxx is derived from the Latin word for voice, and he is trying to live up to the name. Luke Christopher Norton contributed to this report.
Police have not yet found driver By Lilly St. Angelo lstangel@iu.edu | @lilly_st_ang
Police discovered the car that hit two protesters Monday night has an address on its registration that is no longer valid, Bloomington Police Department Capt. Ryan Pedigo said. The police have not been able to locate the driver or vehicle. Pedigo said it is also unknown if the car is registered under the name of the woman who was driving the car Monday. Photos and videos captured the license plate number of the 2015 red Toyota Corolla that a woman drove at a high speed through protesters just before 9:30 p.m. Monday on Walnut Street according to a police report. Two protesters were forced onto the hood and both were flung off when the car turned sharply. Bloomington resident Chaz Mottinger, the woman knocked onto the hood of the car, was taken to the hospital in an ambulance and later posted on social media she was OK. SEE DRIVER, PAGE 3
Car hits 2 protesters at Monday BLM protest Theater By Katharine Khamhaengwong kkhamhae@iu.edu | @katharinegk
A car drove through a crowd and hit two protesters just before 9:30 p.m. Monday night as Bloomington residents were dispersing on Walnut Street after three and a half hours of peaceful protest. The protest was in response to the attack on Vauhxx Booker at Monroe Lake on the Fourth of July. The bright red Toyota Corolla carried a woman and a man on its hood for two blocks, from the intersection of Walnut and Fourth streets to the intersection of Walnut and Sixth streets, where the car turned and both were thrown from the vehicle. Geoff Stewart , 35, suffered abrasions on his arms and was not in need of medical assistance but said that when he got up to check on the woman who had also been on the front of the car, she was unresponsive. Bystander Peter Oren said he knew the woman, who later identified herself as Chaz Mottinger, 29, in a social media statement late Monday night. He was talking with police and said that he had heard she was conscious but had received an isolated head injury. Mottinger was taken away on a stretcher,
SAM HOUSE | IDS
Paramedics, firefighters and law enforcement officers tend to a protester who was struck by a car July 6 just after the conclusion of the protest in downtown Bloomington. The car sped off after hitting multiple protesters and carrying them on the hood of the car before they were eventually flung off.
and a pool of blood was left in the street, which emergency response officials promptly covered with a gravel-like substance. The protest began at 5:30 p.m. with several hundred people gathered at the square holding signs, wearing masks and listening to speakers from various community activist groups and individuals share their stories and demands. The Uptown Cafe set up a table with cups of cold water for protest-
ers, and chants of “How much hate are you willing to tolerate?” drifted across the street. People associated with activist groups including Black Lives Matter Bloomington and Enough is Enough said that the protest had not been organized by any one group but was more of an organic reaction to Booker’s attack. Booker was at Lake Monroe on Saturday when he and other witnesses say he was attacked by a group of men
with Confederate flags who talked about getting a noose as they beat him up. “The first thing they tell you about Bloomington is that it’s this little blue dot in Indiana, that it’s a safe place,” said Caleb Poer, an IU political science student, artist and activist with Enough is Enough. “I knew it wasn’t when I was in elementary school and a kid told me he couldn’t be my friend because his mom said I was Black.” Two members of the Black Lives Matter Core Council, who do not speak to the media as named individuals, said they had come to the protest to ensure that the focus was on systemic problems rather than solely on Booker’s individual incident. “We’ve seen a series of escalating instances, and the next one might end up with someone dead,” one council member said. “To prevent that, we need to address the system now.” The instances they were referring to were a series of events that began June 24 when a group of IU football players claimed they were racially profiled after they were reported for yelling profanities at SEE PROTEST, PAGE 3
department commits to change By Kevin Chrisco kmchrisc@iu.edu | @beatsbykevv
On May 25, George Floyd was killed by Derek Chauvin, a Minneapolis police officer. Black voices were amplified as protests surged across the nation. On June 1, Indiana University’s Department of Theatre, Drama and Contemporary Dance made a statement addressing the nationwide reckoning with race institutions are now undergoing on its Instagram. The statement said the department was committed to creating a safe space for all voices, especially oppressed ones. A frequent point of criticism is that the statement didn't go into specifics, including not even using the word "Black." “It was vague,” Peter Ruiz, a thirdyear graduate student in the MFA SEE BACKLASH, PAGE 3