A retired Toronto banker said he was horrified after thousands of social media posts falsely identified him as the person who shot conservative commentator Charlie Kirk at Utah Valley University, even though he was at home in Canada.
Michael Mallinson, 77, told the New York Times that he received a frantic call from his daughter on Wednesday after posts began circulating that linked his name and photograph to the sniper who opened fire while Kirk spoke to a crowd of about 3,000. The false identification appears to have originated on a bogus news site and spread further via a fake account on X, the social platform formerly known as Twitter.
"I'm just shocked by it," Mallinson said from his home in Toronto. "How quickly it can happen, how one’s name and photo can get spread around quite quickly." According to the Times account, Mallinson said he was wrongly matched to a man seen being detained at the scene; that man was soon declared not a suspect and released, and a second person of interest detained nearby was also released.
Kirk, 31, was shot in the neck while speaking at the university. Initial reporting said the crowd numbered about 3,000. Authorities had not identified a suspect publicly early Thursday afternoon, and officials stated that two people briefly detained by police at the scene were released after they were not believed to be involved.
The misidentification prompted an onslaught of online abuse. Mallinson said posts labeled him a "far left extremist" and "pure evil," and that one post falsely claiming he was a registered Democrat received more than 3 million views. He said he began to receive direct messages on Facebook accusing him of the killing and that the false reports jeopardized his work as an online advocate for arthritis patients.
Mallinson told the Times he contacted local police and took steps to remove or obscure his online presence. He said he is considering legal action against those who spread the bogus information but expressed concern that the misinformation could resurface later.
The rapid spread of the false identification illustrates the speed at which unverified claims can propagate on social networks in the immediate aftermath of a mass shooting. News outlets and social platforms often face intense pressure to identify suspects quickly after such events, and officials and digital-safety experts warn that crowdsourced attempts to name perpetrators can amplify errors.
Authorities at the scene detained and questioned multiple people before releasing at least two who were later ruled out as suspects. Police statements and on-the-ground reporting indicated investigators continued to search for the person who fired the shots.
Mallinson's experience follows other recent incidents in which private individuals were wrongly linked to high-profile crimes online, prompting calls from civil-rights advocates for stronger guardrails on the spread of unverified accusations. In this case, the initial false lead appears to have been seeded by a fabricated news item and spread as users rushed to identify the shooter.
As investigators continued their work on the Utah college campus, the misidentified retiree expressed frustration at the personal consequences of the viral rumor and uncertainty about how long it might affect him. "I would expect, because the news cycle moves so quickly, that it will blow over soon," he said. "But there's always a chance that some idiots somewhere will get hold of this information a few months from now and start making noise about it."
