Washington: Officials in the US state of Rhode Island have denounced misinformation that they said complicated their multiday search for the gunman who killed two students and wounded others at Brown University.
Law enforcement identified the suspect as Claudio Neves Valente, 48, a Portuguese national who attended the Ivy League institution decades ago. They said he acted alone and was found dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound in a New Hampshire storage unit.
But throughout the week, anonymous and right-wing accounts on X flooded the platform with unfounded posts claiming the shooter was a Palestinian enrolled at the school, a narrative that exploded further as university webpages mentioning the student were seemingly removed.
"Criminal investigations are grounded in evidence, not speculation or online commentary," Colonel Darnell Weaver, superintendent of the Rhode Island State Police, said at the briefing announcing Neves Valente's identification late Thursday.
"The endless barrage of misinformation, disinformation, rumors, leaks and clickbait were not helpful in this investigation. Distractions and unfounded criticisms do not support this work. They complicate it and threaten to undermine the justice we seek."
The claims began when an anonymous X account posted photos and videos Monday of the student, Mustapha Kharbouch, beside footage police had released of the person of interest.
Within hours, Kharbouch's image and email were plastered across social media, prompting death and deportation threats as internet sleuths homed in on the individual's pro-Palestinian activism and compared their body and gait to the suspect.
Right-wing podcaster Tim Pool, billionaire Bill Ackman and US Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon were among those who amplified the narrative.
"Bring him to swift American justice," said one widespread post Ackman shared, which alleged a cover-up and declared a "war with Islam."
Prior to Neves Valente's identification, a member of a local law enforcement agency involved in the investigation told AFP that Kharbouch had never been a person of interest.
