After ultimate 12 months’ mass taking pictures at Santa Fe High School in Texas, a man calling himself David Briscoe defined how he had heroically barricaded the door of the study room he became teaching in and told students to lie down and cowl their mouths as gunshots rang out nearby.
But the faculty district said Monday that the tale became false, and no person through that name had ever labored for the school.
Multiple information companies blanketed quotations attributed to Briscoe after the May 2018 shooting that killed 10 and wounded thirteen. He stated he became a replacement English instructor and that the bloodbath befell on simplest his 1/3 day coaching on the faculty.
“I barricaded the door with desks and tables and close the lighting,” CNN quoted him as announcing. In an article that has for the reason that been updated to remove Briscoe’s account, CNN also pronounced that he said he had “heard what sounded like a student getting hit with the aid of a bullet.”
The story fell aside whilst The Texas Tribune commenced making inquiries following a cellphone interview in April and discovered that it regarded Briscoe was in no way at the web site of the capturing.
“We can verify that there has by no means been a worker (part-time or complete-time), alternative, vendor, contractor or intern running in Santa Fe ISD named David Briscoe,” Lindsey Campbell, a spokeswoman for the Sante Fe Independent School District, said in an electronic mail.
The district’s superintendent, Leigh Wall, stated Monday that the obvious hoax was an example of ways fast misinformation can spread, “especially whilst the quantity of unique data to be had is restricted.”
“We are extremely disappointed that a person that has by no means been a part of our school community would represent themselves as a survivor of the mass violence tragedy that our community continued on May 18, 2018,” she added.
Wall said that the district became grateful for the people correcting the report and turned into persevering with to focus at the needs of its college students.
Social media posts suggest that a Twitter account beneath Briscoe’s name persisted to are looking for out reporters this 12 months by using claiming to have survived the capturing.
“I’m no longer too sure in case you recall me but I became really become aside of the Santa Fe taking pictures closing yr,” the account tweeted in April in response to a CNN reporter. “You briefly wrote approximately me in an editorial closing year and it changed into tremendous. 🙂 However, I become thinking in case you have been interested in doing a comply with-up article? In mild of the latest suicides.”
The operator of the Twitter account below Briscoe’s call did now not straight away respond to a direct message. Briscoe is indexed because the leader government of a social media marketing enterprise, but an e-mail despatched to the listed cope with changed into the lower back with a message announcing it could not be added.
The Tribune suggested that the Twitter account with Briscoe’s name stopped responding to the information business enterprise’s messages while it started out inquiring for an observe-up interview in May. In direct messages published with the aid of the news outlet, the Twitter account advised a reporter that he had by no means lived in Texas, that one of his personnel had stolen his identity and that the employee was the only quoted via different news shops.
Time magazine, which additionally up to date its article to cast off the person’s quotations, wrote on the time that “Briscoe’s reality — although, he says, it still appears like a dream — is a nightmare for any instructor.”
Alexandra Samuels, the reporter who broke the story for The Texas Tribune, said she first questioned Briscoe’s account at the same time as reviewing notes from a phone interview she conducted with him. His comments, she stated, have been strikingly similar to those she had studied in his interview with Time mag.
As Samuels persisted reporting for a series on Santa Fe High School one year after the shooting, her suspicions most effective grew more potent.
He Claimed to Have Been a Hero in Santa Fe School Shooting. Turn Out, He Wasn’t Even There
