WNBA player Skylar Diggins-Smith and Yo Gotti are demanding justice for the Black man who was nearly lynched on Fourth of July weekend.
In a letter to the Department of Justice obtained by TMZ, they call on Attorney General Bill Barr to prosecute the two white men charged in the attempted lynching on Vauhxx Booker in Indiana.
Video went viral, showing Booker, a human rights activist, being held against a tree, as the assailants allegedly called for a noose. Luckily, Bystanders eventually convinced the men to let him go.
In a Facebook post explaining the incident, Booker wrote that he and a group of friends were visiting Lake Monroe when he was “attacked by five white men (with confederate flags) who literally threatened to lynch me in front of numerous witnesses.”
Now, in a call for justice, Diggins and Gotti are demanding it is categorized as a hate crime. “A violent racist, racist attack such as this, additionally, is a federal crime,” they wrote.
The case “demands your attention and your full efforts to guarantee that justice is done, by prosecuting the people who attacked Vauhxx Booker for their violent hate crime,” they continued.
The two men, Sean M. Purdy, 44, and Jerry Edward Cox II, 38, were charged with intimidation and battery, resulting in moderate bodily injury. Purdy is also accused of committing criminal confinement while Cox was charged with aiding, inducing, or causing criminal confinement.
However, neither man was charged with a hate crime, which is why Skylar, who is from Indiana, and Yo Gotti are calling for the federal government to get involved.
