Cincinnati man Ronald Moon Jr. shared his story of a bloody attack in a YouTube video that has gone viral.
Moon appears in the video, titled “1853 Kinney Avenue” and posted Wednesday, with blood on his lips and face, a bruise on his forehead and gashes on his shoulder and elbow. He claims he was attacked by three men and two women who he says have previously burglarized his family home, which he has been trying for the last six months to transform into a community center to benefit his neighbors.
As he talks, he begins tearing up and explains that the property in Cincinnati’s Evanston neighborhood was first purchased by his father 25 years ago.
“I’m just trying to do the best I can for my people,” he said.
“I’m tired of seeing this hurt. I kept asking them, ‘Why?’ I kept asking them, ‘Why, why?’ They couldn’t say,” Moon said of his attackers. “They don’t know.”
“Don’t doubt what you hear and what you see other black people tell you,” he continued. “Don’t doubt it, because it’s real. The pain we feel is real. The hurt we feel is real.”
Despite his wounds and his heart-rending story, Moon remains optimistic. “But I still love all, all of my people. I love everyone.”
Since being uploaded to YouTube, and later Reddit, the video has amassed almost 600,000 views and thousands of comments. Moon has since set up an online GoFundMe fundraising page.
The page has raised $40,325 in the past 17 hours. Many have reached out to support Moon in his dream of funding a community center, offering teaching services, donating money or praising his efforts.
“I am in good health and my wounds will heal in time,” he wrote on the page.
On his personal Facebook page and the GoFundMe page that he created, Moon outlines his aspirations to file as a 501(c)3 non-profit organization.
He claims that he quit his job to devote himself fully to his dream of creating a space in which “ideas, skills, and resources can be shared among the neighborhood.”
The expansive list of planned services includes activities such as storytelling, gardening, computing and musical engineering.
Yet others are skeptical of his motives.
Just half a mile from Moon’s Kinney Avenue house, the Evanston Recreation Center provides a fitness center, free parking, kitchen and a meeting room to the communities of five surrounding neighborhoods, one of which is Evanston.
An employee at the recreation center told The Daily Caller that while the neighborhood does have poverty and crime, “none has ever affected our center.” The employee had heard of the attack on Moon, but not of his plans for a community center.
A spokesperson for the Cincinnati Police Department confirmed to TheDC that there is no recorded police report of his alleged attack on June 3.
Moon’s Facebook page says he graduated from Cincinnati’s School for Creative and Performing Arts in 2008 and attended the University of the Arts in Philadelphia from 2008 until 2012.
Moon could not be reached for comment.