Updated at 6:02 p.m. ET
Jussie Smollett, one of the stars of the TV show Empire, reportedly was brutally attacked early Tuesday in what Chicago police are investigating as a possible hate crime. The 36-year-old actor took himself to the hospital directly after what police called a “possible racially-charged assault and battery”; authorities say he is in good condition.
Police received a report that Smollett, who is black and gay, was walking in the downtown Chicago neighborhood of Streeterville around 2 a.m. local time “when two unknown offenders approached him and gained his attention by yelling out racial and homophobic slurs towards him,” the city’s police department told NPR. “The offenders began to batter the victim with their hands about the face and poured an unknown chemical substance on the victim.”
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