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On Aug. 31, 2019, seven people were killed and dozens more injured when they were shot from a vehicle traveling between the cities of Odessa and Midland in Texas. The gunman was himself shot and killed by police, who later identified him as 36-year-old Seth Ator. Almost immediately upon the heels of that identification, the usual online disinformation game-playing began, with various bad actors and misinformed social media users spreading false details about the perpetrator's putative political affiliations. The most widespread and prominent rumor about Ator held that he was a Democrat Socialist whose vehicle sported a sticker endorsing Beto O'Rourke, a former U.S. representative from Texas who is seeking the Democratic presidential nomination: This rumor quickly became a predominant narrative about the shooter on Twitter, along with claims that his social media profile had been scrubbed: In fact, Texas Department of Public Safety Spokesman Sgt. Oscar Villarreal stated that no such sticker was found on Ator's own vehicle, nor on the mail truck Ator hijacked after abandoning his car. O'Rourke's campaign manager also took to Twitter to state that the rumor was completely false: The rumor received a boost through being spread by Tony Shaffer, a former Defense Intelligence Agency officer whose Twitter profile describes him as a member of the Trump 2020 Advisory Board: Related misinformation spread online proffered an alleged picture of Ator's truck bearing a Beto 2020 sticker (the photo was actually swiped from an online store's website) and the false claim that he was a registered Democrat (his most recent voting record indicates no party affiliation):
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