turned his life upside down<\/a>. “Things are getting better,” he said. “But I don’t feel like I am who I should’ve been at this age because of that.”\u00a0<\/p>\nCole and Smith said they plan to appeal the Collin County jury verdict.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“Defending my son was what I should have done. And I would defend my son still,” Smith said. “I feel that the acts were vile. And I feel like that was my opinion of the act. The urinate in a cup, to put it to someone\u2019s lips to have them drink it, is vile.”<\/p>\n
She said she has tried to move on — and her son is doing well, following years of counseling. Smith said she was “saddened” to hear about the harassment Vann said he experienced.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“I never wanted anyone to threaten anyone at the school or anything. I simply wanted them to be held accountable in the proper way,” she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Cole was not available for an on-camera interview, but told WFAA over the phone, “To me, the entire ruling runs afoul of anything decent or just.”\u00a0<\/p>\n
She said there was no evidence presented that she disclosed Vann’s private information and said she never once mentioned his name.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“For him to now try to rewrite history and act like this never occurred is ridiculous,” she said. “I don’t know what’s going on in Collin County, but it’s not justice.”\u00a0<\/p>\n
Vann’s lawyer, Justin Nichols, said he believes the jury was convinced in part by evidence he presented at trial about how Smith used the nearly $120,000 Cole’s GoFundMe raised.<\/p>\n
“The public had been lied to and misled, and when people thought they were giving money to help this kid go to a new school and get some professional help, none of the money was going for that purpose,” Nichols said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
A copy of the GoFundMe included in the lawsuit asked people to “please donate what they can to help with the expenses of therapy and private schooling.”\u00a0<\/p>\n
Cole told WFAA, “So what if he never went to private school. Originally, that was the plan.”\u00a0<\/p>\n
“Did [Smith] use the funds for other things? Of course,” she said, adding that the fundraising page never said the money was only to be used for Smith’s son’s counseling and schooling.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Smith said a portion of the funds did go toward counseling and schooling for her son. She said the remaining portion was also spent on her son.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“Anything to be able to help him be able to move forward with life. He went through a traumatic experience, and these people wanted to support him. And so I used it to help him with anything he needed.”\u00a0<\/p>\n
Smith, who represented herself in the civil case, said she plans to present additional information upon appeal that she said a judge excluded from being included in the initial trial.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“It was something that happened. It was something that my son was deeply affected by and we wouldn\u2019t be here if it weren\u2019t for the actions that happened to my son,” she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Vann said he does not expect to collect the $3.2 million judgment — and said even though he prevailed in court, the incident has defined his life.<\/p>\n
“There was no winner in the end,” he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A 2021 viral Snapchat video showed a Plano boy allegedly bullied into drinking urine. A jury just awarded…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":164049,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[160,162,161],"class_list":["post-168908","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-plano","tag-plano","tag-plano-headlines","tag-plano-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/168908","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=168908"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/168908\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/164049"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=168908"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=168908"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=168908"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}