Rural Nevada sheriff probes potential hate crime after Black man says he was racially harassed

RENO, Nev. (AP) — A rural Nevada sheriff is investigating a possible hate crime after a Black man who was accumulating signatures for a poll measure recorded a confrontation with one other man he stated directed a racial slur at him and stated “they’ve a dangling tree” for individuals like him.

“I’m nonetheless shaking each time I give it some thought,” Ricky Johnson informed The Related Press by cellphone Monday as he boarded a airplane in northern Nevada again to his residence in Houston, Texas.

Johnson posted a part of the video of the Aug. 2 incident in Virginia Metropolis, Nevada, on social media, and the feedback drew swift condemnation from native and state officers. Sponsors of the 10-day Sizzling August Nights traditional automotive occasion that was being held on the time stated it revoked the registrations of these recognized within the video confronting Johnson.

Storey County Undersheriff Eric Kern stated Monday the workplace has accomplished interviews with Johnson and potential suspects and delivered the case to the district lawyer for a call on any expenses.

“So far as a hate crime, it could possibly be a component,” Kern informed AP. “There’s an enhancement we’re .”

Johnson, who can’t be seen on the video he posted to TikTok, stated a white man known as him a racial epithet and referenced the “hanging tree” earlier than he began recording the encounter. Within the recording, Johnson asks the person to repeat what he stated.

A loud, profanity-filled argument on either side adopted earlier than a girl informed Johnson he was on her property and he repeatedly asks her to not contact him as they transfer the dialog into the road, the video reveals.

Kern stated Johnson supplied the video to investigators. He stated nobody, whether or not suspect or sufferer, has been uncooperative within the investigation.

In an announcement over the weekend, the sheriff’s workplace stated it doesn’t condone racism, inequality or hate speech and needs to make sure the general public it’s doing an intensive investigation.

“However I need to say that on the whole, in Virginia Metropolis, this isn’t one thing that occurs right here,” Kern stated. “It’s actually a tragic factor however it’s an remoted incident. It’s has prompted lots of adverse impacts on all sides as a result of persons are getting a adverse opinion. Individuals are calling companies.”

Storey County District Lawyer Anne Langer didn’t reply to an e mail request for remark Monday. A spokeswoman for her workplace referred calls to County Supervisor Austin Osborne, who declined to touch upon the standing of any potential expenses in an e mail to AP however stated the “abhorrent and inexcusable” conduct exhibited “by just a few people should not reflective of our neighborhood and our values.”

Nevada Lawyer Common Aaron Ford, who’s Black, provided his assist Monday to the Storey County Sheriff’s Workplace within the investigation of what he stated was a “hateful, racist incident” in one in all Nevada’s most storied cities.

Virginia Metropolis attracts tens of hundreds of vacationers who stroll its wood-planked sidewalks crammed with outdated saloons and shops within the Virginia Vary simply east of the Sierra, about half-hour outdoors of Reno.

It was Nevada’s largest metropolis within the mid-1800s when the invention of the Comstock Lode introduced hundreds of silver miners there. Samuel Clemens received his begin within the newspaper enterprise and adopted his pen title, Mark Twain, there on the Territorial Enterprise.

Nevada Gov. Joe Lombardo posted on social media saying he was involved and dissatisfied by the incident.

“Racism and hate haven’t any place in Nevada — this conduct should be condemned within the strongest phrases potential,” he wrote on X.

The Virginia Metropolis Tourism Fee denounced the “hateful and racist” conduct as “abhorrent and inexcusable.”

Johnson was working for Superior Micro Focusing on Inc., a Texas-based firm that gives voter outreach and get-out-the-vote providers, to gather signatures for a proposed Nevada state poll initiative geared toward capping charges that attorneys accumulate from shoppers in private harm instances.

Johnson stated he’s been the goal of racial slurs earlier than however the Virginia Metropolis incident was completely different.

“To be truly in the midst of that and you haven’t any manner out. you are feeling such as you’re being surrounded by all these individuals. I felt closed in,” he stated.

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Related Press author Ken Ritter contributed to this report from Las Vegas.