RENO, Nev. (AP) – A rural Nevada sheriff is investigating a potential hate crime after a Black man who was collecting signatures for a ballot measure was recorded confronting another man he said directed a racial slur at him and said “they have a gallows” for people like him.
“I’m still shaking every time I think about it,” Ricky Johnson told The Associated Press on Monday as he boarded a plane in northern Nevada back to his home in Houston, Texas.
Johnson posted part of the video from the August 2 incident in Virginia City, Nevada, on social media, and the comments drew swift condemnation from local and state officials. Sponsors of the 10-day Hot August Nights class car event held at the time said they were canceling registrations identified in the video that confronted Johnson.
Storey County Undersheriff Eric Kern said Friday the office has completed interviews with Johnson and potential suspects and sent the case to the district attorney for a decision on any charges.
“As a hate crime, it can be an element,” Kern told the AP. “There’s an improvement we’re seeing.”
Johnson, who cannot be seen in a video posted to TikTok, said a white man called him a racial epithet and referred to a “hanging tree” before he began recording the encounter. In the recording, Johnson asked the man to repeat what he said.
A loud argument and profanity on both sides continued before the woman told Johnson she was on the property and repeatedly asked him not to touch her while they were talking on the street, the video shows.
Kern said Johnson provided the video to investigators. He said no one, be it the suspect or the victim, was uncooperative in the investigation.
In a statement over the weekend, the sheriff’s office said it does not condone racism, inequality or hate speech and wants to assure the public of a thorough investigation.
“But I want to say that for the most part, in Virginia City, that’s not what happened here,” Kern said. people ask for negative opinions.
Storey County District Attorney Anne Langer did not respond to an email request for comment Monday. A spokeswoman for his office placed a call to County Manager Austin Osborne. Osborne’s office said he was unavailable.
Attorney General of Nevada Aaron Ford, who is Black, offered support Monday to the Storey County Sheriff’s Office in the investigation of what he said was a “hateful, racist incident” in one of Nevada’s most storied cities.
Virginia City attracts tens of thousands of tourists who walk its wooden-planked sidewalks filled with old saloons and shops in the Virginia Range on the eastern side of the Sierra, about 30 minutes outside of Reno.
Nevada’s largest city in the mid-1800s when the discovery of the Comstock Lode brought thousands of silver miners there. Samuel Clemens started a newspaper business and used the pen name, Mark Twain, in the Territorial Company.
Nevada Governor Joe Lombardo posted on social media that he was concerned and disappointed by the incident.
“Racism and hate have no place in Nevada – this behavior must be condemned in the strongest possible way,” he wrote in X.
The Virginia City Tourism Commission condemned the “hateful and racist” behavior as “reprehensible and inexcusable.”
Johnson is working for Advanced Micro Targeting Inc., a Texas-based company that provides voter outreach and voting services, to collect signatures for a proposed Nevada state ballot initiative to cover the fees attorneys collect from private clients. injury cases.
Johnson said he has been the target of racial slurs before, but the Virginia City incident was different.
“To really be in the middle and you don’t have a way out. It’s like you’re surrounded by all these people. I feel closed,” he said.
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Associated Press writer Ken Ritter contributed to this report from Las Vegas.
