A US “rage-bait” streamer infamous for hurling racial slurs at black people to provoke an on-camera reaction has been flooded with donations after being charged with attempted murder for allegedly shooting a man.
Dalton Eatherly, 28, who goes by the name “Chud the Builder”, is facing 15 to 60 years behind bars after allegedly shooting a man in the stomach and shoulder in a fight outside a Tennessee courthouse earlier this month.
Joshua Fox, who is black, reportedly confronted Eatherly over his racial content — in which he regularly calls black people “chimps” and “n*****s” — outside Montgomery County Courthouse in Clarksville on May 13.
The “confrontation” led to a “physical altercation that escalated to gunfire”, the Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office said in a statement.
During the exchange, Eatherly “turned his body in a bladed stance towards Mr Fox and reached for his firearm located in his right jacket pocket”, according to an arrest warrant obtained by Rolling Stone.
District Attorney Robert J. Nash said Eatherly also accidentally shot himself during the fracas.
Both men were taken to hospital, with video showing Eatherly being taken away on a stretcher. Mr Fox was medically evacuated by LifeFlight to Vanderbilt University Medical Centre where he underwent emergency surgery.
Mr Fox was initially detained along with Eatherly and later released, officials said.
Eatherly was arrested later that day and charged with attempted murder, as well as aggravated assault, reckless endangerment with a deadly weapon and employing a firearm during a dangerous felony, officials said.
He is being held at the Montgomery County Jail.
At his arraignment and bond hearing on May 15, Judge H. Reid Poland III set Eatherly’s bond at $US1.25 million ($1.75 million), “based upon the fact of how many people were in the courtyard over here at the courthouse and the seriousness of all these felonies”.
The judge also cited the need to “protect the public interest and public safety”.
Montgomery County Sheriff John Fuson said that “this kind of violence won’t be tolerated, and our office will work to make sure those responsible are held accountable to the fullest extent of the law”.
His next bond hearing is scheduled for Thursday, with a preliminary hearing on May 26.
Eatherly has not yet entered a plea.
In a statement to CNN, Fox’s mother Carolyn Smith said her son, who is a disabled veteran, was “a loving father of three amazing children whose life has been severely impacted by this injustice”.
She thanked “our community and the many individuals across the globe who have supported my son during this incredibly difficult time” and asked the public to respect the family’s privacy.
“We remain confident that justice will prevail,” she said.
“As Dr Martin Luther King Jr. once said, ‘Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere’.”
‘Disturbing’
Eatherly livestreamed himself speaking to first responders at the shooting scene, insisting it was self-defence.
He claimed he walked past a group of people “laughing” and “pointing at me”.
Eatherly, who is frequently recognised on the street and confronted by passers-by, said one of the men in the group then approached him and threatened to hit him if he spouted racist slurs, saying, “I have PTSD”.
“He said, ‘You start saying all that chimp out s**t to me and I’m-a hit you’, and he hit me, he started whaling on me, even after I had to defend myself by shooting him,” Eatherly said in the clip.
Eatherly bizarrely tried to pin blame on “rich people” goading strangers into harming him. “They’re all publicly saying ‘If y’all assault this guy, we’ll make you rich’. The f**k,” he said.
There were several innocent bystanders in the area when shots were fired at about 1.20pm, with surveillance video showing “a ricocheting projectile hitting nearby walls”, according to the arrest warrant.
On the day of the shooting, the moustached antagonist was supposed to appear in court for a civil case, where he is being sued by a debt and credit collector, according to court documents obtained by ClarksvilleNow.
Eatherly allegedly owes $US3300 to Midland Credit Management Inc, although it’s not clear if he appeared for the hearing.
Days earlier, Eatherly was arrested for allegedly harassing strangers at an upscale steakhouse in Nashville.
He reportedly began shouting racial slurs at the restaurant before announcing he would not pay his $US400 bill even after polishing off the entire meal.
Eatherly had been asked not to livestream inside the venue and became “disruptive and started making racial statements, yelling, screaming” and causing a scene when asked to leave, according to an affidavit obtained by CNN.
He was later arrested and charged with theft of services, disorderly conduct and resisting arrest, and released on a $US5000 bond.
Lawyer Jake Fendley was appointed to represent Eatherly in the shooting case, after the Public Defender’s officer filed a motion to withdraw from the case.
Mr Fendley said in the hours after the hearing, his office had been bombarded with hateful phone calls and messages.
In a lengthy statement, Mr Fendley said “to assume an lawyer agrees with the actions of the accused is preposterous” and that his role “is to represent people regardless of their race, religion, ideology, or allegations against them”.
“This entire case is disturbing. Racism is a terrible thing and it’s a flawed method of thinking,” the statement read in part.
“If Dalton Eatherly is famous for being a racist, it is certainly a symptom of our country’s crisis and not the crisis itself. The anger you feel perhaps would be better directed towards the men and women in charge who continue to encourage and sanction behaviour of this nature.”
Donations pour in
A GiveSendGo fundraiser for Eatherly has raised $US268,000 ($374,650) as of Wednesday, local time.
The fundraiser, “Help the Chud and his family”, was created prior to the shooting incident after Eatherly had already faced widespread backlash for his racist antics online, but donations have spiked sharply following the attempted murder charge, blowing past the original goal of $US100,000 ($140,000).
The self-styled “free speech patriot” first came into public view in early 2025 after allegedly calling a black woman the n-word during a road rage incident, with a video posted online by the woman’s daughter resulting in Eatherly losing his job as a contractor.
Eatherly claimed he had been targeted by Black Lives Matter activists “over words I shared online”, claiming he had “sometimes used the n-word in what I thought was edgy harmless humour”.
He started his own company, but claimed continued “slander” had “crushed my business’s income”, his GiveSendGo reads.
Eatherly then began sharing videos online of interactions with black people, calling them racial slurs including “chimps” and “n*****s”, growing his social media presence and soliciting donations.
He later created a meme coin called $CHUD and began livestreaming on crypto platform Pump.fun, documenting his increasingly provocative antics on the street.
In a number of videos, Eatherly would threateningly show his holstered gun, and in one incident he sprayed a black man in the face with bear spray after he knocked his hat off his head.
“He’s trying to build this following by angering people,” Joshua Fisher-Birch, a researcher of online extremism at the Counterextremism Project, told Rolling Stone.
“He’s yelling racist statements, being a racist public nuisance in the hopes that this will lead to positive financial contributions.”
The case echoes that of Shiloh Hendrix, a Minnesota mother who raised nearly $US840,000 ($1.2 million) after she was accused of calling a black child a racial slur in a viral video at a park last April.
Analysis by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) found the crowd-funding campaign for Hendrix, promoted by prominent white supremacist social media influencers, was flooded with donations accompanied by racist and anti-Semitic messages.
‘Boundaries of free speech’
Legal analysts say Eatherly will face an uphill battle proving self-defence under Tennessee law.
“In this situation Eatherly used a firearm, and to be justified legally in using deadly force you have to have a reasonable, objective belief that you are in imminent fear of serious bodily injury or death,” lawyer Greg Isaacs told Tennessee news station WATE on Wednesday.
“What you can’t do, and what is going to be the problem with the defence in this case, [is] provoke the encounter, or you’re the initial aggressor, or you escalate the confrontation. That limits your right to use self defence. That’s his MO — he is a rage-baiter. He wants to film the reaction.”
Mr Isaacs predicted the case would go to trial, as prosecutors would be unlikely to offer a plea deal given the national attention.
“There is going to be some significant legal debate on really important constitutional principles in that courtroom,” he said.
“What are the boundaries of free speech? What are the boundaries of self-defence? Baiting and provoking somebody, how much does that limit your right?”
Lawyer Andrew Branca, a legal self defence expert and popular YouTuber, said it was an open question under Tennessee law whether a racial slur could be considered provocation.
“I just don’t think it’ll be a hard sell for a prosecutor, to a jury of normies — especially if at least two of them, statistically, are going to be black — that calling a black man the n-word to their face would qualify as provocation that loses you self-defence,” he said on Tuesday.
“I think that’s by far the biggest vulnerability. The biggest legal threat to Dalton Eatherly’s legal defence is that question of provocation.”
However, Mr Branca said he was “highly confident inferring that there was no provocation” in the encounter with Mr Fox.
“There was no racial slur spoken by Dalton Eatherly to Joshua Fox in this confrontation, because if there were any evidence of that we would all know,” he said.
“The prosecution would have released that everywhere.”
