A Texas jury has delivered a decisive verdict in a case that once ignited national outrage and dominated headlines.
Five years after a classmate accused Asher Vann of racially motivated bullying at a sleepover, jurors awarded Vann — now a college freshman — $3.2 million in damages, finding that false claims and a viral narrative caused severe emotional distress and invaded his privacy.
"I don’t feel so scared and so little as I did back then. I feel like I’m getting heard," Vann said Tuesday on "The Will Cain Show."
"I feel people will understand me and people will listen to me and help me climb up this uphill battle."
The case stemmed from a 2021 incident in which 13-year-old SeMarion Humphrey alleged that Vann and several other boys shot him with a BB gun and forced him to drink urine during a sleepover — accusations that were quickly framed as race-based bullying and drew national media attention, protests and involvement from activists.
Vann said the accusations were far from the truth.
"We went hunting for frogs. We had big jackets on, so dumb kids, we each took shots at each other like a Nerf war, except with airsoft guns," he recalled.
"Then after, he [Humphrey] fell asleep, and way before that, we all agreed, whoever falls asleep first gets pranked, and he got pranked, and it was nasty, but it was not like this big racial torture that it was played out to be."
Vann was never charged with a crime, and police investigations at the time did not result in any arrests....
A Texas jury has delivered a decisive verdict in a case that once ignited national outrage and dominated headlines. Five years after a classmate accused Asher Vann of racially motivated bullying a...