Two people misidentified online as suspects in the fatal shooting of right-wing US activist Charlie Kirk told AFP Thursday they were terrified by the misinformation targeting them, as the manhunt for the real killer continued.
Michaela, who asked to be identified by her first name due to safety concerns, told AFP she became “really scared” as she was inundated with hate-filled messages and threats after her image circulated in posts that falsely named her as the shooter.
“I’m getting witch-hunted online,” she said. “Some people want to enact vigilante justice on me.”
The 29-year-old transgender woman told AFP she spent the day Wednesday in the state of Washington, where she lives and works as a paralegal.
She said she has only been to Utah once, for an overnight stop in Moab while moving from Texas in May, and is not a student at Utah Valley University, where Kirk was shot.
Screenshots shared with AFP of her bank transactions and iPhone location history confirm she was in Washington when Kirk was killed.
Her roommate also corroborated her location, calling the rumors “insane.”
Misinformation proliferates rapidly after major breaking news events, and transgender people have become a common scapegoat after US mass shootings.
The high-profile assassination of Kirk, a polarizing figure with a massive following, kicked the search for information into overdrive. Multiple out-of-context visuals quickly spread online.
In Michaela’s case, her profile image appears to have been erroneously linked to Kirk’s shooting because it was indexed in searches for another X user who posted about the Turning Point USA founder’s visit Wednesday to Utah Valley University.
The user, whom Michaela said she does not know, had previously shared one of Michaela’s posts earlier in the week.
“People on the right wing, obviously they want a shooter, and a trans person fits their narrative,” she said. “It’s pretty surreal to see how quickly it happened.”
The FBI released pictures of a person of interest Thursday and also said the presumed murder weapon had been found, after two people taken into custody were later released.
On Instagram, Michaela has frantically sought to clarify she is not a suspect and did not author the posts about Kirk’s Utah event. She has also contacted the FBI.
But her picture has rocketed across social media, boosted by prominent accounts that have promoted Russian disinformation and the QAnon conspiracy theory.
In direct messages reviewed by AFP, several people threatened to kill her, often using explicit language or anti-LGBTQ slurs.
“You better watch out because we’re coming for you,” one message said.
Across the border in Canada, another man was dealing with similar harassment.
Michael Mallinson, a 77-year-old retired banker from Toronto, posted an article from a US fact-checking outlet on his LinkedIn “to set the record straight” after X users wrongly matched his photos to footage of a man who was initially apprehended by police.
The hoax had started with an account impersonating a local news station in Nevada.
Mallinson told AFP he learned of the misinformation about him when his daughter called in a panic, pleading that he delete his social media accounts to protect himself.
She had received what he described as a “very nasty message” on Facebook.
On X, hundreds more spiteful comments had been left under a photo he uploaded in May.
“I have absolutely nothing to do with this,” Mallinson said, explaining that he has never been to Utah and had not heard of Kirk before yesterday. “I was horrified and shocked.”
Mallinson said he deactivated his accounts, alerted police and has been emailing his friends and relatives the truth.
“It’s my image, it’s my name, but it’s not me, and I don’t really know what to do,” he said. “I worry about longer-term ramifications. That stuff stays on social media forever.”
