Vauhxx Booker: Black man condemns charges over alleged race attack

A black man who alleges that he was the victim of a racist attack has himself been charged with assault in the US state of Indiana.

Criticising the move, Vauhxx Booker told reporters that he had been charged "in his own attempted lynching".

Mr Booker said white men had threatened to "get a noose" while attacking him at a gathering in July 2020.

Partial video of the incident was widely shared on social media and two men were later charged with assault.

But a year after the event, prosecutors in Monroe County have now also charged Mr Booker - a civil rights activist - with felony assault and misdemeanour trespassing over the same incident.

"There's nothing more American than charging a black man in his own attempted lynching," Mr Booker said on Monday.

He vowed to fight the charges, adding: "I don't care if they want to drag me back to the hanging tree itself."

Mr Booker's lawyer, Katharine Liell, called the charges unprecedented. "I have never seen a special prosecutor open a new case and file charges a year later," she told the news conference.

Mr Booker said his legal team believed the charges stemmed from his refusal to engage in mediation with the two white men charged with assault. He told reporters he refused mediation because it would have meant signing a confidentiality agreement and dismissing the charges against them.

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) said the charges were racially motivated.

A statement from the group was read out at the news conference by Guy Loftman, of the NAACP's Monroe County Branch.

"But for Booker being black, no-one would have suggested that he was the criminal," the statement said. "This is systemic racism in action. If the black man won't go along with letting them [the alleged attackers] off the hook, he will be punished."

In a statement, Sonia Leerkamp, the special prosecutor for Monroe County, told the BBC: "Mr Booker is presumed innocent of any charges that have been filed. That being said, unlike Mr Booker, I am ethically restrained from commenting on the evidence prior to its presentation at trial. I am doing my best to apply the law to the facts and follow the principle that we are a nation of laws, not men."

Mr Booker, a member of the Monroe County Human Rights Commission, said he and his friends had gathered to watch a lunar eclipse at Lake Monroe on 4 July 2020 when they encountered a man wearing a hat emblazoned with a Confederate flag who told them they were on private property.

Later, when Mr Booker and his friends approached the man and his group to "smooth things over", the interaction "quickly became aggressive", he wrote in a post on social media at the time. "I was almost the victim of an attempted lynching", he said.

Two of the men allegedly jumped Mr Booker from behind and knocked him to the ground before others joined in, he said.

While bystanders shouted for the assailants to release him, Mr Booker said the men threatened to "break his arms" before saying "get a noose". Those alleged comments were not captured in the video footage posted online.

In its report on the incident, the Indiana department of natural resources had recommended charges against all three men. However, prosecutors at the time only filed charges against the two white men - Sean Purdy and Jerry Cox.