“This is not a prank. This is beyond bullying. You are evil.”
These are some of the words Summer Smith, standing before supporters and reporters at a press conference in Plano, Texas, in March 2021, directed at the teen boys she alleged had abused and tormented her then-13-year-old Black son SeMarion Humphrey during a sleepover a few weeks earlier.
After learning that several of her son’s white middle school classmates had peed in a cup, woken her sleeping son and induced him to drink a brew of urine mixed with apple juice, she was incensed.
The repellent act was filmed by one of the boys, and a 9-second video showed Humphrey being encouraged to bring the cup of yellow liquid to his lips, as excited giggles are heard in the background. The video was then circulating among students at Haggard Middle School and would soon go viral across the country.
Smith was joined at the presser by attorney Kim Cole, who called it a “racially motivated hate crime” and demanded investigations by local police and the FBI.
Smith and Cole claimed that Humphrey had also been slapped and shot with a BB gun by his white classmates during the weekend sleepover, and subjected to other verbal and physical abuse, including racial slurs, over the previous two years.
After investigations by the Plano Independent School District and the Plano Police Department did not result in criminal charges or expulsion from school for the offending boys, as she had called for, Smith filed a civil lawsuit against the boys and their parents in February 2023. She claimed that Aaron Vann was negligent in providing dangerous weapons (BB guns) to minors and failing to properly supervise the minors when they used those weapons to shoot “hundreds of rounds” at her son.
She also claimed the other parents knew or should have known their children “had a propensity to commit violence” and failed to ensure their child was properly supervised and did not cause harm to another child.
Most of those claims were either dismissed by a judge or dropped by Smith herself, the Dallas Morning News reported.
In the meantime, Smith and Cole had set up a GoFundMe entitled “Justice For SeMarion” to help the family raise money for therapy and private schooling for the boy who was “subjected to the unthinkable” by his former football teammates.
Smith, Cole and SeMarion also appeared on a flurry of local and national media outlets, including CNN, NBC and ABC’s “Good Morning America,” repeating their allegations of the assault and racial abuse that the boy had endured, sparking outrage, garnering sympathy and spiking donations to the GoFundMe account, which eventually totaled nearly $120,000.
Aaron Vann filed a countersuit on his son Asher Vann’s behalf in October 2023, claiming that Smith and Cole had led “a fraudulent campaign to ruin these boys’ lives so they could raise money, and they didn’t care that they caused the boys to be subject to overwhelming and unwarranted public hatred, disdain and ridicule.”
The lawsuit claimed that both women had “pushed an outrageously false narrative” of unfounded racist allegations and accused them of intentional infliction of emotional distress and invasion of privacy.
Last October, after a three-day trial, a racially diverse jury found in the plaintiffs’ favor on both counts, awarding $3.2 million in damages to Asher Vann, now a 19-year-old college freshman. Collin County District Judge Benjamin Smith upheld the verdict and ordered Smith and Cole to pay the damages on Jan. 30. Both have filed notices declaring their intent to appeal.
In his civil complaint, Vann contended that Asher and SeMarion were longtime friends and that when SeMarion came to celebrate his birthday on the snowy weekend of Feb. 13, 2021, all five middle school boys were having “a great time” together, while engaging in some “immature” behavior.
That included taking turns shooting each other with BB guns outside when they were bundled up in thick clothing. “No one was singled out, everyone participated, and no one was hurt,” the lawsuit claimed.
After watching movies and joking around that night, the group “as they had planned for whoever fell asleep first,” decided to “play a prank on their friend” SeMarion, who had nodded off. The boys filled a cup with apple juice, peed into it, woke him up and “offered him the icky brew, which he appeared to take a brief sip (swallowing none).”
They all left the next morning “as friends,” the complaint said, but two weeks later, when SeMarion and “M.Y.,” another boy who had attended the party, got into a dispute while playing video games, M.Y. revealed he had videoed the prank and then sent it out to multiple people, setting off “a domino of events.”
Vann’s lawsuit claimed that when Smith learned of the video, she saw “an opportunity to capitalize on the situation” and “twisted” the events of the sleepover weekend as a racially motivated assault on her son, and began raising unrelated “prior grievances” about SeMarion being bullied at school to school officials, the news media, and in numerous posts on Facebook.
Smith and Cole “embarked on a media and social media campaign” and “revealed information regarding the three boys, their names, addresses, their parents, and their parents’ businesses” and “falsely stated or implied this was a group of white boys who intentionally targeted a black boy, with racist motivations,” which “they knew wasn’t the truth. … But boys being stupid doesn’t raise money.”
Asher Vann told WFAA that he now regrets what he did over his birthday weekend in 2021.
“It was immature. It was stupid. It was nasty. But that’s not who I am and that’s not me today.”
“This wasn’t me doing a racist act. This isn’t me hating someone because of their skin color. This was me at an immature stage of my life … doing immature dumb things.”
The results of Smith and Cole’s public crusade against the three boys was “traumatic,” the lawsuit said. They were denounced as racists on social media, urged to leave town, and subjected to “unwarranted public hatred, disdain and ridicule.
One person commenting on a post by Smith on Facebook about the boys who had allegedly abused her son urged others to “post that baby’s face” and warned, “No threats, all truth. WE WILL NOT REST UNTIL YOUR COLLEGE ADMISSION APPS ARE REJECTED, YOUR NAME AND YOUR PARENTS NAME IS SMEARED TO SHAME, AND IF YOUR GRANDPARENTS ARE STILL AMONG THE LIVING, PLEASE PUT THEM ON NOTICE A.S.A.P. THAT WE’RE COMING FOR THEM TOO SINCE YOU ARE A PRODUCT OF THEIR ENVIRONMENT.”
At one point, a group of 300 people marched to and protested outside Asher Vann’s house and threw bricks through its windows, he said.
“I was getting death threats from thousands of people on social media,” Vann told the Washington Free Beacon. “It was scary. Full-grown adults were rushing my house and causing harm to it. What if I was home and they saw me? They could have ripped me from my home and beaten me.”
Asher suffered from intense feelings of social isolation, fear, depression and anxiety, the lawsuit said, manifesting as insomnia, racing heartbeat, headaches and digestive issues.
Smith and Cole “were free to air their grievances to school officials, or even file a lawsuit like they’ve done here,” the complaint said. “But they are not free to create an outrageously false narrative for the purposes of raising money and garnering attention, at the expense of children’s privacy.”
Their conduct “by way of the ongoing fraudulent GoFundMe”— which had raised $119,353 at the time the countersuit was filed — and multiple continuing media efforts was designed “to ensure the saga for these boys never comes to an end,” the plaintiffs argued.
After the large jury verdict, Vann’s lawyer, Justin Nichols, told WFAA that he believed the jury, which included five Black jurors, was swayed by evidence he presented at trial showing that “the public had been lied to and misled” and that “none of the money” raised from the GoFundMe went “to help this kid go to a new school and get some professional help.”
Nichols said financial documents showed the GoFundMe donations were spent on things like lavish meals and travel, streaming services, car payments and rent.
Smith told reporters that a portion of the funds did go toward counseling and schooling for her son, and the rest went toward “anything to be able to help him move forward with his life. He went through a traumatic experience, and these people wanted to support him.”
Cole told WFAA, “To me, the entire ruling runs afoul of anything decent or just.” She said there was no evidence presented that she disclosed Vann’s private information and said she never once mentioned his name.
Smith argued in a motion to set aside the jury verdict filed in November that the plaintiffs’ counsel’s claims that she and Cole were “the spark” that set off a “social media firestorm” that inspired others to cause harm to Asher Vann did not meet the legal standards for finding her liable for the actions of those third parties.
While some people doxed Vann and maligned him online in response to her social media posts, their comments “were not under her control,” she asserted, and she did not always share their sentiments.
Still, she maintained, she has a constitutional right to speak about the incident involving her son and to discuss Vann’s “atrocious criminal behavior,” including that he “planned and willfully participated in causing a disabled child to drink urine.”
“Defending my son was what I should have done. And I would defend my son still,” Smith said. “I feel that the acts were vile.”
She said she has tried to move on — and that SeMarion, now a college freshman, is doing well, following years of counseling.
Smith said she was “saddened” to hear about the harassment Vann said he experienced.
“I never wanted anyone to threaten anyone at the school or anything. I simply wanted them to be held accountable in the proper way,” she said.
Vann told the Dallas Morning News that the moment he heard the jury’s decision, “I felt like a big weight had finally been lifted off my chest. I felt so overwhelmed. It was just pure happiness.”
He said that even though he prevailed in court, the incident had caused him to lose friends and marred the last several years of his life.
“There was no winner in the end,” he said.
Great Job Jill Jordan Sieder & the Team @ Atlanta Black Star for sharing this story.
