This story was originally published June 10, 2026 by the Nashville Banner. Sign up for their newsletter.
By the time he arrived at the Montgomery County Courthouse on May 13, carrying a selfie stick and a gun, the online streamer known as Chud the Builder had already developed a large internet following among the racist right.
The 28-year-old, whose real name is Dalton Eatherly, was getting increasingly famous for livestreaming himself walking around Clarksville or downtown Nashville, proudly calling Black passersby the N-word and using other racial slurs. If his targets got visibly upset, he would declare that they were “chimping out,” a favorite catchphrase for him and his followers. Clips of his streams produced and posted by other social media users have upwards of a million views.
But since his arrest that day for shooting a Black man named Joshua Fox after an altercation outside the courthouse, Eatherly’s case has become a cause célèbre for white nationalists, January 6 defendants and self-proclaimed “free speech absolutists.” While Eatherly remains jailed in Clarksville for attempted murder, his page on the Christian crowdfunding site GiveSendGo — which allows people to register prayers along with sending money — has brought in hundreds of thousands of dollars in support of his legal defense and currently has a total of more than $300,000. A GoFundMe created by Fox’s family has collected nearly $271,000.
The donors are from around the country and even outside of it, and although most are anonymous, many of them make clear the motivation behind their support. Numerous donations include references to Austin Metcalf, a white 17-year-old who was stabbed to death by a Black 17-year-old, Karmelo Anthony, during an altercation at a track meet in Texas in April 2025. A jury found Anthony guilty of murder on Tuesday. Another donation to Eatherly’s defense was given in the name of Channon Christian and Chris Newsome, the white couple raped and murdered by three Black men and a Black woman in Knoxville in 2007. Others are even more direct; one contribution cites the 88 Precepts, a collection of white supremacist writings, and more than one makes reference to Rhodesia, the former white-minority-ruled African state that has been valorized by modern white supremacists.
Eatherly has also attracted IRL support in the courthouse from online personalities. The right-wing activist Jake Lang — who was pardoned by President Donald Trump for his role in the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol — was arrested after an outburst during Eatherly’s May 21 court hearing. Last week, Alex Rosen, known for his own use of slurs as well as his organization that runs “To Catch A Predator”-style sting operations on alleged pedophiles, appeared in court and offered to put up money to cover at least some of Eatherly’s $1 million bond. Rosen — whose X account cites his location as “Retardville, USA” and his birthday as January 6 — told the court he is a “free speech absolutist.”
Online outrage from Eatherly supporters has focused primarily on the idea that he was acting in self-defense when he shot Fox and the notion that he is facing unduly harsh treatment by the legal system because he is a white man who dares to use the N-word.
The precise details around the shooting are still not entirely clear. District Attorney Robert Nash said during the June 3 court hearing that, based on video evidence, Eatherly walked up and had a verbal exchange with Fox and his wife, who were sitting outside the courthouse. Although the couple was there for a court hearing, Nash said that Eatherly had no legitimate purpose to be there, having missed his court proceeding earlier in the morning. Nash told the court that although investigators don’t have audio of the interaction yet, the two had a verbal exchange that continued as Eatherly walked away. When Fox got up and started walking toward him, Nash said, Eatherly appeared to be reaching for his gun at which point Fox punched him in the head. During the ensuing tussle, Nash said, Eatherly fired seven shots with five striking Fox and at least one striking himself.
Eatherly was charged with attempted murder, employing a firearm during a dangerous felony, aggravated assault and reckless endangerment with a deadly weapon. Fox has not been charged.
Nash went on to tell the court that Eatherly’s social media posts indicated his intent to provoke Black people into violence. In one post on May 4, responding to a Black streamer who said anyone who assaulted Eatherly would attract lots of financial support, Eatherly responded: “Keep encouraging your fellow blacks to assault me. When you see a chimp with their brains blown out on the time line just know yall did this to your own people.”
Eatherly’s defense attorney, Jake Fendley did not respond to a phone call or email from the Banner requesting comment. He did post a lengthy statement on Facebook last month responding to “hateful phone calls and emails” his office had received about his representation of Eatherly. In court last week, he told the judge that nothing Eatherly said to Fox justified “a physical attack” and that his client had a legitimate self-defense claim.
“I believe the proof is going to show that Mr. Eatherly didn’t say anything racially charged until Mr. Fox started threatening to kill him,” Fendley said. “And then he’s struck by somebody who’s a self-proclaimed combat veteran who says he’s having a PTSD episode.”
Claims that Eatherly is being treated unjustly have focused on his seven-figure bond amount as well as the judge’s recent ruling about how it can be paid. Montgomery County Circuit Court Judge William Goodman III said last week that Eatherly’s $1 million bond amount was in line with state law that states that a judge “shall” set a defendant’s bond no less than twice the normal amount when that defendant is already out on bail for previous criminal cases. Eatherly has a pending harassment case in Clarksville as well as one in Nashville related to an incident at a downtown restaurant several days before the shooting in which he left without paying his bill.
According to the arrest affidavit in that case, restaurant and security managers at Bob’s Steak and Chop House downtown told police that Eatherly had ordered and consumed $371.55 of entrees, drinks and appetizers when they realized he was livestreaming. When they asked him to stop, according to the affidavit, he “became disruptive and started making racial statements, yelling, screaming and otherwise creating a scene” before refusing to pay his bill.
Eatherly missed a court hearing in Nashville last week on that case and faces being jailed here again as a result. His next court date in that case is set for June 17.
The incident at Bob’s Steak and Chop House was far from his first in Nashville. The Metro Nashville Police Department confirmed two other instances in which officers responded to disturbances involving Eatherly. On May 6, officers responded to a gas station on Brick Church Pike to find Eatherly arguing with a group of Black people about him allegedly calling them racial slurs. He claimed that he’d been assaulted and his cell phone had been damaged. The next day, Eatherly made a report to the police about an incident on Broadway in which a Black man slapped Eatherly’s cowboy hat off his head, leading to Eatherly spraying the man with pepper spray. Later in the night, Eatherly told police, a white man threw food at him as he was walking down the street.
Eatherly’s feed on X includes posts with at least partial video footage of both incidents.
Fendley argued for the bond in Clarksville to be reduced, describing the other criminal cases as “petty” and the current one as “a shooting where someone’s not dead.”
Experienced defense attorneys who spoke to the Banner about the case said the bond amount did not seem unusual to them, given the circumstances, but that Goodman’s rules about how it could be paid were more so. The judge said it is his practice not to allow any single bonding company to put up collateral for more than a $100,000 bond. That means it would take 10 bonding companies, each putting up $10,000, to pay the $100,000 needed to bail Eatherly out of jail. Fendley asked the judge to reconsider his limit, saying that out of some 20 bonding companies working in Montgomery County, only one or two were willing to touch Eatherly’s case. Goodman denied that request.
More recently, Eatherly’s supporters have directed their ire at the Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office, which oversees the jail where he is still detained. On June 7, a post appeared on his Chud the Builder account on X claiming to be written by his fiancée.
“This is chuds fiancé, he gave me access to his X,” the post read, quote-tweeting another post about Eatherly’s treatment. “Chud wants this reposted on his account because he wants his Bible back ASAP.”
Later, the account retweeted a post identifying the facility’s interim jail administrator with her photo and encouraging supporters to call and email her.
Lt. Bishop Delaney, a spokesperson for the Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office, told the Banner that Eatherly has always had access to a Bible.
“He has been issued an electronic tablet consistent with his current housing classification,” Delaney wrote in an email. “The tablet provides free access to religious materials and other reading resources. This policy is applied uniformly to all inmates.”
This article first appeared on Nashville Banner and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
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