A retired banker who lived in Toronto found himself involuntarily at the center of a political storm after being falsely linked to the shooting of the right -wing commentator Charlie Kirk on Wednesday.
Michael Mallinson, 77, had no idea what was happening until he received a panic phone call around 6 pm, while he was taking a nap. It was his daughter, who indicated that he eliminated his social networks because his name and photo were being extended online on an account claiming that he was the suspect of the shooting.
The problem: Mallinson says he has never set foot in Utah.
“All this was shock and horror, first of all, that there had been a shooting, but secondly of everything that was named or involved in it,” Mallinson said.
Kirk, a right -wing and ally activist of the president of the United States, Donald Trump, who played an influential role in gathering young Republican voters, was shot around 12:20 pm local time in OREM, Utah, in what the state governor called a political murder, even as a suspect has not been formally identified.
Post said Mallinson was the shooter
The rumor seems to have begun when an account that passes through a Nevada news channel, Fox Reno 11, shared a photo of Mallinson next to one of a suspect stopped by the police after Kirk’s shooting.
The detained person seemed to be an older man with glasses and a blue shirt, with a haircut similar to a mallinson in a photo he posted in an old Twitter account. Mallinson says he thought he had eliminated the account after Elon Musk bought the platform.
But the account had published Mallinson’s photo as a false foreground of a detained person and then published by the Police.
The post also called Mallinson as the shooter and said he was a Democrat recorded in Utah.
Since then, the publication has been withdrawn, but other publications that share the same erroneous information have accumulated thousands of views in X.
In a statement sent to CBC Toronto, Sinclair Broadcasting Group, owner of The Fox Channel, said the publication should not be attributed to the station and that they were working to eliminate it.
Craig Silverman, co -founder of Indicator, a publication focused on digital deception, said at a time when there are so many online tools available for manuter enthusiasts, it is easy to be deceived by inaccurate information.
When trying to obtain more information about the suspect, the people who disseminated the claim on Mallinson were probably taken by cables by potential clients that were inaccurate.
“They do not understand how to interpret those results to make sure they do not take them along the wrong way,” said Silverman.
In situations like these, Silverman says that the best course of action is to wait and not reach conclusions before all the details are available.
‘Alarming’ how fast you can disseminate erroneous information
Mallinson said that before deactivating his social media accounts, he received a variety of messages from people in response to his alleged participation in the shooting.
“I received some unpleasant messages on Facebook, but I also heard from people who I don’t know what I told me warn me that my name and my face were out there,” Mallinson said. “However, it is quite alarming that erroneous information like this can extend so fast.”
He said that his family approached the Toronto Police service to alert them about the situation and seemed interested in discussing it with him, but he had not yet had the opportunity to connect with an officer.
“I feel raped,” Mallinson said.
“I have many friends around the world on Facebook with whom I communicate and I had to deactivate my accounts for a while without really telling them anything. And now my wife and I are sending emails to say: ‘Hey, this is my image and name, but it’s not me'”.
