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On or around 29 March 2016, several unreliable web sites reported that Muslim men in San Bernardino had fired upon hikers in a nearby park, and that the news media (in complicity with local police) covered up the incident (for unspecified reasons): According to these sites, a group of heavily armed, apparently Muslim men (shouting Allahu Akbar) shot at hikers and campers in the Deep Creek Hot Springs area of Apple Valley, California. Police responded to the scene and tracked down the armed individuals, but then decided to let them go, and the media supposedly completely ignored the bizarre incident. However, the Los Angeles Times (a major newspaper local to the incident, but somehow unaware of the coverup) published an article on the subject on 29 March 2016. According to the Times, police investigated the reports of shooting, and the armed men they interviewed at the scene were co-operative. No part of that reporting described the men as Muslim, claimed that they had fired at anyone, or indicated that anyone in the group shouted Allahu Akbar: Also apparently ignorant of the suppression of news reporting on the incident were Los Angeles television station KCAL, the Victorville Daily Press, and the Press-Enterprise, all of whom also reported on the incident: The Press-Enterprise article also described initial reports of the men's appearance as inaccurate, according to police in San Bernardino: The San Bernardino County Sheriff's Office also issued a press release about the incident on 27 March 2016, which read: As the official incident report stated, no one in the area questioned by police said they had witnessed guns being fired nor reported having been fired upon. Police found and interviewed the group of men in question and discovered that their possession of firearms was in compliance with the law and that none of them had any outstanding warrants or criminal histories. While the caller who reported the men to police claimed five to seven of the men wore turbans and fired assault rifles, police didn't mention turbans or other headwear, and they noted that the men were in possession of handguns, a rifle, and a shotgun (but no assault rifles). No credible news reports made any mention of the Allahu Akbar claim, and no witnesses stated they had been shot at by the men while hiking or camping. Also, the police report described the men only as males, not Middle Eastern males or Muslim males. The web site that started this rumor was Superstation95, which is not a superstation at all but rather a repository of misinformation from Hal Turner, who in 2010 was sentenced to 33 months in prison for making death threats against three federal judges. (The name listed in the site's Contact page is Turner's criminal lawyer.) That same site similarly (and baselessly) claimed that a woman who crashed into pedestrians on the Las Vegas strip in December 2015 had shouted Allahu Akbar and was subsequently rebuked by the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department for spreading false information: Superstation95 also falsely claimed that the December 2015 San Bernardino mass shooting occurred because the shooter was offended that pork was served at a Christmas party, that all cargo ships ceased transporting goods in January 2016, and that seafood was contaminated with cancerous tumors following the Fukushima nuclear disaster. Secondary reporting claiming that Muslim men fired upon hikers (and that the media covered it up) appeared on a site that had previously inaccurately claimed Illinois had applied Sharia law to driver's licenses, that Target introduced Sharia-compliant checkout lanes, and that Muslims successfully banned Halloween at a New Jersey school.
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