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2017 Smithsonian Noose Incident Investigators Had Video And DNA, Couldn’t Find A Suspect

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Hours of video and DNA evidence weren’t enough to identify a suspect after a noose was found in the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American Culture (SNMAAC) three years ago, authorities said Friday.

“Numerous hours of review of surveillance video yielded no results for suspects,” Alexandra Picavet, a spokesman for the National Park Service, told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “DNA was recovered but unidentifiable to any individuals. The case is no longer being actively investigated until further information becomes available warranting further action.”

SNMAAC’s leadership condemned the alleged placement of the racist symbol the same day it was found.

“The noose has long represented a deplorable act of cowardice and depravity — a symbol of extreme violence for African Americans,” the museum’s founding director Lonnie Bunch said in a Twitter statement at the time of the incident. “Today’s incident is a painful reminder of the challenges that African Americans continue to face.”

A statement from our Founding Director Lonnie Bunch on the noose found in our history galleries today. pic.twitter.com/sFWVSaobhV

— Smithsonian NMAAHC (@NMAAHC) May 31, 2017

“It was found on the floor of an exhibition. Park Police did the investigation,” Smithsonian spokeswoman Linda St. Thomas recalled in an email to the DCNF. “We have many visitors in that museum and I know they never found the person who dropped it. FBI was not involved, just Park Police who handle problems on the National Mall.”

A similar incident, later dismissed as a false alarm, occurred a few weeks ago when a piece of rope described as a noose was found in NASCAR driver Bubba Wallace’s vehicle garage. An FBI investigation said the “noose” had been present in the same vehicle garage since before Wallace was assigned to it, and therefore not a hate crime. NASCAR later said in a statement that the rope was a garage pull.

Jimmy Johns, a popular sandwich chain, fired multiple employees Monday after a video surfaced online that appeared to show workers constructing a noose out of bread dough and wrapping it around a colleagues neck, according to Forbes.

This happened in Woodstock, GA, at a #JimmyJohns. White employees decided to make a noose out of bread dough, to mock the lynching of Black Americans. According to a rep at the store, the employees and the manager were fired. pic.twitter.com/W0cDhZ8bNI

— Ryan Guillory Sr. ???????? ???????? (@Mr_RyanGuillory) July 5, 2020