The Huffington Post on Tuesday night was apparently tricked by a Twitter user who offered a phony eyewitness account of a fatal police shooting in Berkeley, Missouri.
St. Louis County police said a Berkeley police officer was conducting a routine business check on a gas station at about 11:15 p.m. when he approached two men. One man allegedly pulled a handgun and pointed it at the officer, who fired several shots that fatally wounded the man while the second man fled.
Authorities have not identified the victim, but a woman named Toni Martin told reporters that the victim was her 18-year-old son Antonio.
A Twitter user with the handle @DesJuanTheThug, going by the name Jesús Cristo, caught the Huffington Post’s attention with these tweets:
I can’t believe my best friend just died in front of me #AntonioMartin
— Jesús Christo (@DesJuanTheThug) December 24, 2014
Right in front of me #AntonioMartin
— Jesús Christo (@DesJuanTheThug) December 24, 2014
Christo declined to speak to the Huffington Post over the phone and instead relayed his story through direct messages on Twitter, according to screenshots of the original article captured by BuzzFeed.
Huff Post gets duped by Twitter user claiming to have witnessed loss of “best friend” #AntonioMartin pic.twitter.com/ZrCb56DmB0
— Jon Passantino (@passantino) December 24, 2014
Christo told the Huffington Post he and Antonio Martin were stopped by an officer who said they fit descriptions of recent robbery suspects and tried to search them. He said Martin refused, and the officer then opened fire after Martin refused orders to lay on the ground.
Sebastian Murdock, who wrote the story for HuffPost, later said he was duped:
I was misled and made a foolish error. Thank you all for pointing this out. I am correcting the story to reflect as much.
— Sebastian Murdock (@SebastianMurdoc) December 24, 2014
The correction at the bottom of of Murdock’s post now reads:
A previous version of this story included an interview with a man claiming to have been at the scene of the shooting and friends with the deceased. As police have released statements saying the second person involved in the incident has fled the scene, the source is now suggesting he was never there.
British news site The Independent also appears to have altered its article on the shooting after it sourced Christo’s phony account from the Huffington Post.
Christo later gloated about the whole thing:
Tell The Huffington Post to do a better job of finding credible sources.
— Jesús Christo (@DesJuanTheThug) December 24, 2014
I pissed the entire country off?
— Jesús Christo (@DesJuanTheThug) December 24, 2014
