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(Reuters) - Actor Jussie Smollett of the television drama
“Empire” staged an attack on himself that appeared to have
racist and homophobic overtones as a publicity stunt, Chicago
police said on Thursday.

The 36-year-old, who is black and openly gay, was arrested and
charged with lying to police in connection with the Jan. 29
incident, in which he paid two men $3,500 to strike him and put
a noose around his neck, according to police.

Here is a brief list of other incidents in the United States
involving discredited reports of racially motivated attacks:

December 2016 - Yasmin Seweid, 18, was charged with filing a
false police report after telling police that three white men,
yelling the name of then President-elect Donald Trump, had
attacked her on a New York City subway for wearing a traditional
Muslim head scarf.

January 2016 - Ariel Agudio, Asha Burwell and Alexis Briggs,
former students at the State University of New York at Albany,
were charged with false reporting and misdemeanor assault after
claiming they were racially attacked on a bus by 12 to 20
people, including white men, according to reports by Times Union
newspaper. University police accused the three students, who are
black, of being the aggressors in the physical altercation and
were dismissed from the school.

October 2008 - Ashley Todd, a former volunteer for John McCain’s
2008 presidential campaign, admitted to Pittsburgh police that
she lied about being robbed and beaten by a black man after he
saw a McCain bumpersticker on her car, according to reports by
the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Todd, who is white, was sentenced
to nine months of probation.

October 1994 - South Carolina native Susan Smith drowned her two
young sons when she let her car roll into a nearby lake with the
boys inside. Smith, who is white, had originally told police
that the children had vanished when an armed black man forced
his way into the car. She later confessed to the killings and
was sentenced to life in prison.

November 1987 - Tawana Brawley, then 15, claimed she was
kidnapped and raped by a gang of white men in Wappingers Falls,
New York, who used charcoal to scratch racial slurs into her
skin. A state grand jury found her story to be untrue and all
the men who were accused in the attack were exonerated. Brawley,
who is a black woman, insisted years later that her story was
true.

Reporting by Gina Cherelus in New York; Editing by Matthew Lewis

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-people-jussie-smollett- incidents-fact/factbox-list-of-some-reported-racial-attacks-in-u- s-deemed-to-be-false-idUSKCN1QA2NJ
 

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