US woman staged racist attack: FBI

2012-10-24 09:00

(File, AFP)

Chicago - A young black woman in the US state of Louisiana apparently staged a racist attack in which she told police that three men set her ablaze and scrawled KKK on her car, officials said on Tuesday.

"The wounds were self-inflicted," Kyle Hanrahan, a spokesperson for the FBI's Louisiana bureau, said.

Sharmeka Moffitt, aged 20, was seriously burned in the incident and remains in critical condition.

She called police from a park in the town of Winnsboro on Sunday night and told them three men in white hoodies doused her with a flammable liquid and ignited it.

The letters KKK, for the white supremacist organisation Ku Klux Klan, and a racial slur were scrawled on her car in what appeared to be toothpaste.

The FBI was called in to assist local authorities because the incident was initially considered a possible hate crime.

- AFP