Man admits daubing racist graffiti all over his own car as Halloween 'prank'

Incident sparked fears of racial tensions and caused FBI to open civil rights investigation

Images posted to social media showed the car covered with racial slurs (Facebook/Andrew Hammond)

A Kansas man has admitted to defacing his own car with racist graffiti as a Halloween prank, police said.

Photographs shared on social media showed the vehicle parked close to Kansas State University covered with racial slurs including "Go home" and "date your own kind".

The incident sparked fears of racial tensions in the community and caused the FBI to open a civil rights investigation into a possible hate crime.

The black students' union also held an emergency meeting at the university and patrols were stepped up in the area.

But days later, Riley County Police Department said the 21-year-old owner of the car had admitted to defacing the vehicle himself.

Dauntarius Williams will not be charged however, with authorities concluding that charging him for a false report would "not be in the best interests of the citizens".

"We want to acknowledge that people felt anger and pain as a result of pictures and words that they saw," Kansas State University spokesman Jeff Morris said. "Those are very real responses."

He added: "The incident maybe wasn’t real — the emotions were."

Williams told police he wanted to "apologise from the bottom of my heart" and said he wished he could go back to that night.

"The whole situation got out of hand when it shouldn’t have even started," he said.

Additional reporting by AP