New footage showing ‘Empire’ actor, Jussie Smollett with a noose around his neck, has been released by the Chicago Police.
The police on Monday, released nearly 70 hours of video footages, including bodycam footage of police officers speaking to the actor as he wore a noose around his neck soon after the alleged hoax hate-crime attack.
The video showed police officers speaking to Smollett inside his apartment after he reported being attacked by two racists who tied a noose around his neck on Jan. 29.
In the video, Smollett is still wearing the noose during the interview with officers inside his apartment.
“Do you want to take it off?” one of the cops asked during the exchange. “Yeah, I do. I just wanted you all to see it,” Smollett said.
Smollett’s face is blurred in the video because investigators believed he was the victim of a hate crime at the time of the attack.
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Smollett later claimed the assailants yelled racist, homophobic slurs; put a noose around his neck in the alleged street attack and said “This is MAGA country!”
He also claimed in January, that he had been beaten up by two men who doused him in chemicals while yelling racist and homophobic slurs.
News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that one clip shows Nigerian brothers Abel and Ola Osundairo, who were arrested over the attack, allegedly travelling to the crime scene.
In the video, the brothers are shown in a taxi on their way to meet Smollett, wearing hooded jackets and covering their faces.
The car ride took place at 1.22am and the alleged attack took place at 2am.
The pair confessed to cops in mid-February that the attack was staged because the TV actor was “unhappy about the response he received over hate mail”, a police transcript revealed.
The new videos were released almost three weeks after two 911 calls from the night of the attack were made public.
Smollett’s manager Frank Gatson made the calls around 40 minutes after the Empire actor returned to his apartment with a noose around his neck, New York Post reported.
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Gatson first called 911 at 2.22am following the alleged attack on a Chicago street on January 29.
“I just need the police to come by, I work for an artist, I don’t really want to say his name,” Mr Gatson told a 911 dispatcher.
“He states he went to Subway … and two guys, somebody jumped him or something like that. I just want to report it and make sure he’s alright,” Gaston said.
When asked why Smollett was not calling the cops himself, Mr Gatson responded: “He was cool, he didn’t want me to call you guys.”
The operator then informed Gatson that Smollett is the only one who can file a police report.
“He’s definitely gonna make the report. I’m gonna make him make the report,” Gatson replied in the three-minute call.
NAN reports that Smollett was eventually charged with making a false police report when investigators discovered he allegedly paid two men to carry out the hoax attack.
The charges against him were later dropped by Chicago prosecutorson on March 26 – prompting outrage from the mayor and police chief.
The city of Chicago later filed a civil complaint against Smollett for refusing to reimburse them for overtime payments to cops who investigated the hoax. (NAN)