As reported on Wired.
BY SPENCER ACKERMAN
Unidentified people react on December 14, 2012 at the aftermath of a school shooting at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. Photo: Don Emmert /AFP/Getty Images
Updated, 6:05 p.m. EST
In the media’s rush to find out information on the suspected Newtown, Connecticut, school shooter, numerous news outlets misidentified a Facebook page belonging to someone with a similar name. Denunciations and even death threats quickly accumulated.
CNN, the Huffington Post, Slate and other news organizations pointed to the Facebook page of one Ryan Lanza, who hails from Newtown and currently lives in New Jersey. “Ryan Lanza Facebook Page Shows Suggestive Details Of Apparent Newtown, Connecticut Shooting Suspect,” was Huffington Post’s original headline before it realized the error. As of 5 p.m. EST, the Connecticut state police are declining to identify the shooter.
The public profile photo on the Facebook account was shared over 3,000 times (Update 5:00 EST: It’s up to 14,000 times now). Many came with scary comments. “You Is A Dead Man Walking…” read one. “WHAT COULD POSSIBLY MAKE YOU WANT TO KILL LITTLE BABIES,” read another. “Selfish. Cowardly. Weak. Damned,” read a third.
Yet the owner of the page posted “Fuck you CNN it wasn’t me” and “Everyone shut the fuck up it wasn’t me,” saying he was at work during the shooting. The page owner’s status updates were set to private — a terrible irony, since the absence of the visible denial evidently resulted in more people posting condemnations of him on his Facebook page. By about 3 p.m. Eastern, the page had been taken down.
The Associated Press’ Adam Goldman tweeted that the actual suspect in the Newtown killings, which have claimed the lives of 26 people so far, including 18 children (Update 5:00 EST: The death toll is now 27 people, including 20 children), is dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound. His name may not even be Ryan Lanza: The New York Post is reporting it’s Adam Lanza. The apparent shooter’s brotheris being held for questioning by police.
Matt Bors, a cartoonist (and Danger Room friend) in Portland, Oregon, is Facebook friends with the misidentified Ryan Lanza. “I’m getting inundated with messages,” Bors says. He’s never met the proprietor of the page. But that hasn’t stopped random strangers from denouncing Bors as actual friends with the Newtown killer.
“How could you be friend of [sic] such a monster?” Dani Ohana posted to Bors’ wall. “Please tell me you are being sarcastic. I didn’t know him,” Bors replied. “You are his friend on Facebook..” was the reply.
The information left on Lanza’s page allowed people to identify his home address. A New Jersey journalist, Brett Wilse, said he had spoken with the page’s proprietor, reporting “the shooter may have had his identification,” according to the Jersey Journal.
The Facebook page’s proprietor isn’t the only “Ryan Lanza” caught in a web of mistaken identity. A Twitter user adopting the handle @Ryan__Lanza tweeted, “ haha i didnt kill anyone, stop spamming my twitter please. and all my other tweets were just jokes because i only had around 20 followers.”
It’s unclear where on the internet the misidentified innocents can go to reclaim their online reputations.
Update, 6:05 p.m. EST: Fox News is reporting that a Ryan Lanza of Hoboken, N.J., is Adam Lanza’s brother and is currently in police custody for questioning. It is not clear that Ryan Lanza is the same person as the proprietor of the Facebook account discussed in this piece. AP is reporting Ryan Lanza is not believed to have played any role in the shooting.