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On 5 October 2017, the disreputable web site GotNews.com — run by notorious Internet troll Chuck C. Johnson — reported (with no evidence or citations) that the security guard being lauded as a hero for his role in helping to stop the massacre perpetrated by Las Vegas Strip shooter Stephen Paddock was, in fact, an accomplice in the shooting. Stephen Paddock, 64, has been named as the lone gunman by law enforcement in the 1 October 2017 mass shooting, in which he fired on a music festival crowd of 22,000 with a modified automatic weapon from a suite in the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino, killing 58 and wounding hundreds. High-ranking officials from the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department, the law enforcement agency leading the investigation, have said that while they still don't know if Paddock had any accomplices in planning the attack, they have on several occasions confirmed that per their investigation, he was the only shooter. Large-scale tragedies like mass shootings and terrorist attacks have been unfortunate lures for conspiracy theorists and purveyors of false information in the Internet age. Disreputable web sites latch on to the chaotic aftermaths of such incidents to seduce audiences with alternatives to official investigations, claiming to harbor the truth that dishonest officials and the mainstream media are hiding from the public. For example, GotNews stories carry this fundraising plug: GotNews didn't provide in its story any evidence to support their claim that hotel security guard Jesus Campos was an accomplice, other than an anonymous official with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF). GotNews reported: The ATF contacted GotNews to notify them the story was inaccurate; the story was then updated with this disclaimer: However, another disreputable web site, YourNewsWire.com, which regurgitated the GotNews story on 6 October 2017, did not include this crucial update to alert readers that the allegations in the story were disputed by the very agency cited. We followed up with the ATF to ask whether any of their employees had been in contact with GotNews. The agency responded: We sent Johnson a detailed list of questions about the GotNews story, but Johnson only responded asking that we please print his claim to have a source with ATF. We found no evidence to support stories that report Campos acted in any other way than heroically. Campos has been hailed as a hero by the police department for not only locating Paddock's room, but braving a hail of gunfire in doing so.. Police said Campos provided them with a door key to the suite and stayed to help them evacuate other guests until officers ordered him to seek medical aid for a gunshot wound to the leg (there are no reports that Campos had a wound to his arm, as GotNews claims). During a 4 October 2017 press conference, Clark County Sheriff Joseph Lombardo said: In another update on 6 October 2017, LVMPD Undersheriff Kevin McMahill reiterated that Campos's actions were nothing other than heroic: This is not the first time Johnson has framed an innocent person (a heroic one, no less) in the aftermath of a deadly incident. Dallas attorney Andrew Sommerman is representing in a pending defamation suit the family of Joel Vangheluwe, who Johnson wrongly identified as the driver of the Dodge Charger that ran down a group of counter-demonstrators at a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia in mid-August. He said of Johnson: On 12 August 2017, GotNews retracted the article naming Vangheluwe as the driver of the car that rammed into the crowd, leaving 32-year-old Charlottesville resident Heather Heyer dead, allegedly because the police hadn't yet named a suspect. Why GotNews backtracked in that case to defer to police but not in the case of Campos is unclear but accuracy doesn't seem to have been the goal — as of 6 October 2017, the GotNews story still says police have not identified the suspect, even though James Alex Fields was not only publicly identified but also charged with the crime the day the story was published. Johnson, 28, has a long and dizzying history of scandal as a semi-successful Internet troll. He gained widespread notoriety when he attempted to out a woman who had anonymously written a disputed column about being raped on campus for Rolling Stone, but then identified the wrong woman. In 2015, he joined a short list of people banned by Twitter after a tweet asking supporters for funding to help take out civil rights activist DeRay McKession. Johnson is also behind the crowdfunding web site WeSearchr, where he has raised funds for supporters of the neo-Nazi web site Daily Stormer and a movement of white supremacists who chartered (then abandoned) a ship in an effort to scuttle the efforts of aid organizations trying to rescue migrants making the deadly Mediterranean Sea crossing between North Africa and Europe. During a press briefing on 9 October 2017, Lombardo said investigators revised the shooting timeline, noting that Paddock shot Campos six minutes before he opened fire on the crowd. Lombardo acknowledged that Campos was shot at 9:59 p.m. Responding to AP reporter Ken Ritter's question, Lombardo said: Variations: On 12 October 2017, readers asked about a purported CNN item reporting the claim as news: A fake news web site posing as CNN published an article reiterating the debunked rumor on 11 October 2017: The domain name (cnn-internationaledition.com) and use of CNN's logos successfully duped social media users into believing the story was legitimate and sharing it. Hosting records revealed that the site was registered on 10 October 2017, one day prior to the publication of the article. Additional registrar details indicated that the site was registered outside the United States by an individual, not CNN.
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