In the hours after the Kansas City Super Bowl parade shooting, highly influential right-wing accounts and Republican lawmakers falsely identified one of the shooters as “Sahil Omar”.
But in October 2023 - soon after the Lewistown, Maine, mass shooting that killed 18 people - this account was the first to mention that a migrant named “Sahil Omar” was behind the attack.
But that did not dissuade the person behind the account from attempting to connect “Sahil Omar” and his made-up biographical details with several other news events over the coming months.
While the man was the subject of intense speculation in the days after the shooting, he was later identified as Denton Loudermill from the nearby town of Olathe, Kansas.
But in a series of direct messages on X between the account holder and BBC, they refused to share any information about the ruse or why they frequently made the false claim.
The prank is similar to an internet “joke” that routinely went viral following mass shootings and terrorist attacks - blaming killings on a fringe comedian named Sam Hyde.
The original article contains 735 words, the summary contains 180 words. Saved 76%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
This is the best summary I could come up with:
In the hours after the Kansas City Super Bowl parade shooting, highly influential right-wing accounts and Republican lawmakers falsely identified one of the shooters as “Sahil Omar”.
But in October 2023 - soon after the Lewistown, Maine, mass shooting that killed 18 people - this account was the first to mention that a migrant named “Sahil Omar” was behind the attack.
But that did not dissuade the person behind the account from attempting to connect “Sahil Omar” and his made-up biographical details with several other news events over the coming months.
While the man was the subject of intense speculation in the days after the shooting, he was later identified as Denton Loudermill from the nearby town of Olathe, Kansas.
But in a series of direct messages on X between the account holder and BBC, they refused to share any information about the ruse or why they frequently made the false claim.
The prank is similar to an internet “joke” that routinely went viral following mass shootings and terrorist attacks - blaming killings on a fringe comedian named Sam Hyde.
The original article contains 735 words, the summary contains 180 words. Saved 76%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
Hi bot. You need to start more paragraphs with the word ”but.”
You can do it! 50% is rookie numbers.