A Plano student was called a racist bully. His accusers now must pay him $3.2 million

https://www.dallasnews.com/news/courts/2026/02/07/a-plano-student-was-cal
led-a-racist-bully-his-accusers-now-must-pay-him-32-million/ 

In 2021, the mother of one of Asher Vann’s friends accused him of
bullying her son and began a social media campaign against him. A judge
last week upheld a jury’s verdict ordering the woman and her lawyer to
pay him damages. 

The last few months of Asher Vann’s eighth grade year at a Plano middle
school were a time he’d like to forget. High school wasn’t much better,
he said, especially his freshman year. 

“It was horrible,” the now 18-year-old said during a phone interview
with The Dallas Morning News Thursday. “I lost all my friends. I really
felt alone.” 

The nightmare for Vann began in March 2021, with a series of Facebook
messages posted by Summer Smith, the mother of one of his friends. Vann
was 14 and attending Haggard Middle School at the time. 

The posts accused the teen and three of his football teammates of
calling Smith’s son, who is Black, racial slurs, shooting him with BB
guns and forcing him to drink their urine during a sleepover at Vann’s
house. A link to a Change.org petition included in some of the posts
identified the students by their full names, while one to a GoFundMe
page urged viewers to send donations to pay for counseling services and
private school tuition for Smith’s son. The News is not naming Smith’s
son because he was a minor at the time of the incident. 

The posts sent Vann’s life into a tailspin from which he wouldn’t
recover for years. Those dark days have finally started to fade over the
last few months, first with a jury deciding at a trial in October that
Smith and her lawyer, Kim T. Cole of Frisco, had intentionally inflicted
emotional distress on the teen and invaded his privacy. The panel
ordered the two women to pay him nearly $3.2 million in damages. 

On Jan. 30, Collin County District Judge Benjamin Smith issued a final
judgment in the case, in which he upheld the jury’s verdict, and levied
additional financial penalties against Smith and Cole. 

Smith told The News Friday she plans to appeal. Cole didn’t return a
message seeking comment on the decisions. 

“I felt like a big weight had finally been lifted off my chest,” Vann
said of the moment he heard the jury’s decision. “I felt so overwhelmed.
It was just pure happiness.” 

Outside the courtroom, tears welled in his eyes as he thanked his
attorney, Justin Nichols of San Antonio. 

“The hug he gave me after the trial was one of the most meaningful
things that has happened to me in my entire career,” Nichols said. “It
was just like years of being in this awful shadow had finally been
lifted. It was an extraordinary moment.” 

How it began
The series of events that sparked the social media campaign against Vann
and the others began a couple of weeks before the first posts were made.
Vann was celebrating his 14th birthday and had invited Smith’s son to
spend the weekend with him. He asked three other friends to join them
the following night. 

It was especially cold that weekend and the boys bundled up before
heading out with BB guns to go frog hunting at a nearby creek, according
to the lawsuit Vann later filed against Smith and Cole. The boys decided
to do a test to see if they could feel BB shots through their heavy
coats, the lawsuit said, and took turns shooting at each other,
according to the claim. 

After getting back to Vann’s house, they stayed up late, watched movies,
told jokes and talked about playing pranks on each other, the complaint
said. When Smith’s son fell asleep first, the boys poured some apple
juice into a cup, “dribbled a bit of urine” into it, then woke Smith’s
son and handed him the cup, the lawsuit said. A video one of the boys
recorded shows someone holding the cup to the groggy boy’s mouth while
he takes a sip and then appears to spit it back into the cup. The other
boys can be heard laughing in the background. 

The boy who took the video distributed it to others a couple of weeks
later, after he and Smith’s son got into an argument, the claim said.
When school officials found out about it, they reported it to Smith’s
mother. 

Smith sought Cole’s legal help shortly afterward. Cole put together the
GoFundMe page seeking funds for therapy and private school tuition. More
than 4,000 people submitted donations that totaled $119,000, a
screenshot from the page showed. 

Smith’s social media campaign soon went viral. Not long after, major
television news networks and newspapers were covering the story.
Keyboard warriors sent a slew of vile and threatening messages directly
to Vann or posted online. Protesters rallied outside his home, and threw
bricks through a window at his house and his father’s business. 

Friends turned on him. Police launched an investigation. School
officials weighed punishment options. Opportunities that normally would
have come easily, like playing on a local recreation league basketball
team or getting a part-time job, were no longer viable. 

In February 2023, Smith was the first to file a lawsuit, suing the boys
and their parents for intentional infliction of emotional distress. Most
of those claims were either dismissed by a judge or dropped by Smith
herself, documents presented at trial showed. The Vann family
countersued and their case was the only one to make it to trial. 

Nichols said financial documents offered as evidence showed the GoFundMe
donations were spent on things like lavish meals and travel, streaming
services, car payments and rent. 

Vann was the only boy involved who testified at the trial, Nichols said.
Neither Smith nor Cole, who represented themselves, called Smith’s son
to the witness stand. 

‘It was a crime’
Smith said Friday she disagrees with the jury’s and judge’s decisions,
and was frustrated by rulings that prevented her from presenting some
evidence. She also said she stands by her actions. 

“What happened to my son happened,” she said. “It was a crime. It was an
assault.” 

Smith also argued she shouldn’t be held responsible for what other
people posted on social media or did in response to her posts and media
interviews. 

“Did people take that and run with it, creating TikTok videos and
putting out their own narrative? Yes,” she said. “But I didn’t do that.” 

Nichols and Vann concede that handing the cup with the apple juice and
urine mix to Smith’s son to drink was wrong and Vann has expressed
regret for that. 

“No one condones the boys’ behavior,” Nichols wrote in the lawsuit.
“They all acted stupidly by playing with BB guns, and playing gross
pranks on each other.” 

But the attorney argued the “exploitation of the situation” by Smith and
Cole, including outing the boy and their families to the public and
using race to “fan the flames of outrage” in order to promote a
fundraising campaign was reckless and cruel. 

As a result of the jury’s verdict, Vann said he feels more comfortable
sharing his side of the story, and is much more confident people will
believe him. 

“I feel really supported right now,” he said. “It’s a good feeling.”


-- 
November 5, 2024 - Congratulations President Donald Trump.  We look 
forward to America being great again.

We live in a time where intelligent people are being silenced so that 
stupid people won't be offended.

Every day is an IQ test. Some pass, some, not so much.

Thank you for cleaning up the disasters of the 2008-2017, 2020-2024 Obama 
/ Biden / Harris fiascos, President Trump.

Under Barack Obama's leadership, the United States of America became the 
The World According To Garp.  Obama sold out heterosexuals for Hollywood 
queer liberal democrat donors.