As noted in our most recent fact check, false information is easily spread in times of chaos and confusion. Early reports are often incorrect or incomplete and information surrounding the horrific school shooting in Florida on Wednesday is no exception.
Facebook users marked a story on the shooting from the website Woke Sloth as potentially containing unsupported claims.
“The most recent school shooter was a Trump supporter who trained with White Nationalists” the post, which has been viewed tens of thousands of times, reported.
The article from Woke Sloth cited a Daily Beast piece that, in turn, relied on a report from the Anti-Defamation League. The ADL reported that “a spokesperson for the white supremacist group Republic of Florida (ROF) claimed . . . that Nikolas Cruz, the man charged with the previous day’s deadly shooting spree at a Parkland, Florida, high school, was associated with his group.”
Both articles from the Daily Beast and the ADL, however, include important updates to the story that Woke Sloth’s report does not.
On Thursday afternoon, Broward County Sheriff Scott Israel said claims that Cruz was associated with ROF are “not confirmed at this time” and that the police were still investigating potential connections.
Lt. Grady Jordan told reporters that his office (Leon County Sheriff’s Office in Tallahassee) has arrested the spokesperson for ROF, Jordan Jereb, “at least four times” according to the Associated Press, and that the group had no known connection to Cruz.
“His office has ‘very solid’ information on the group and ‘there’s no known ties that we have that we can connect’ 19-year-old Nikolas Cruz with the group,” the AP reported.
On Thursday afternoon, Jereb himsel—the spokesman for the white supremacist group—wrote online that he may have been mistaken in linking Cruz with his organization (the ADL noted this change of testimony in its update to the original report).
Additionally, the Southern Poverty Law Center, a left-wing organization, noted Thursday that Jereb was an attention seeker that other White Nationalists say “never misses a photo op” and is “a nut job who should be avoided.” In 2014, Jereb “wrote [the SPLC] to complain that [they] had not already listed ROF as a hate group,” the article says. “It may seem odd that Jereb would bring attention to his group by claiming a connection to Cruz, but Jereb has always been somewhat of a publicity seeker.”
Articles claiming that Cruz is demonstrably connected to the ROF may be missing key information that casts doubt on those alleged ties. The evidence that Cruz was a “Trump supporter” comes from reports by students that Cruz wore a “Make America Great Again” hat around the school and that he posed with the hat in a picture on Instagram.
As with most reporting after tragic and chaotic events, more information is required to back up or refute certain assertions.
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