A social media influencer from Tennessee known online as “Chud the Builder” and for posting racist videos has been given a $1.25 million preliminary bond on charges including attempted murder, officials said Friday.
Dalton Eatherly, 28, is accused of shooting another person in the middle of the day on Wednesday outside the Montgomery County Courthouse during an altercation.
At his arraignment, prosecutors requested that he be held without bond pending a full hearing next week.
Judge H. Reid Poland III rejected that request but imposed a high bond, “based upon the fact of how many people were here in the courtyard or at the courthouse and the seriousness of these felonies.”
In addition to the attempted murder charge, Eatherly faces charges of employing a firearm during a dangerous felony, aggravated assault and reckless endangerment with a deadly weapon.
Poland also noted that Eatherly had previously been released on bond in two other cases. He faces a harassment charge in Montgomery County from November. He was also charged last week in Nashville’s Davidson County with theft of services, disorderly conduct and resisting arrest.
In audio shared online after the alleged incident, Eatherly was heard claiming he had acted “in self defense” and claimed the other individual had “hit me and started wailing on me.”
“I will defend my life with lethal force. Do not approach me with intent to threaten bodily harm,” he wrote on his X account last week.
An attorney who was appointed to represent Eatherly on the felony charges Friday, Jacob Fendley, did not return a phone call requesting comment.
Eatherly, who is white, posts videos to social media where he tries to provoke Black passersby by using racial slurs and racist dog whistles. He makes videos in Nashville and in Montgomery County’s Clarksville.
He was being held in the Montgomery County jail on Friday, according to jail records. A full bond hearing is scheduled on May 21, and a preliminary hearing is scheduled for May 26.
