A fake tweet screenshot making an anti-transgender comment is being shared online falsely claiming US-based news outlet WSM 4 Nashville tweeted it while interviewing the kin of a victim of the school shooting in Nashville, where six people including three children were killed this month.
BOOM found that the viral tweet in the screenshot was not tweeted by WSMV 4 Nashville and no such anti-transgender statement seen in the screenshot was made by relatives of the victims.
Six people including three children and three staff members were killed at a private Christian school in the Green Hills neighborhood of Nashville, Tennessee on March 27, 2023, when a gunman opened fire. The three 9-year-old children identified by the police are Hallie Scruggs, Evelyn Dieckhaus and William Kinney.
The police identified the shooter as Audrey Hale (28), who was a former student at the school. Hale was fatally shot by officers not long after they arrived at the scene. Metropolitan Nashville Police Chief John Drake stated that the shooter was a transgender person and added that they were still in the initial investigation to say if it actually played a role in the incident according to NBC News.
The tragic event has also led to several pieces of disinformation being shared online.
The viral screenshot reads, "Father of murderer girl, 9, at Covenant school shooting, calls for "an end to tolerance" in family statement to the press, vowing "to fight with every fiber of my being for the end of the trans evil. The evil that took my daughter. There must be a solution to this evil in America."
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The same screenshot is viral on Facebook with the false claim.
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FACT-CHECK
BOOM found that the viral tweet screenshot is fake and no such tweet was put out by the news outlet WSMV 4 Nashville. Even the remarks attributed in the tweet are fabricated and no such anti-transgender statement was released to the press by relatives of the victims of the shooting.
WSMV 4 Nashville tweeted dismissing the claim and stating that the viral tweet screenshot is fake and was not tweeted by the outlet
Using Twitter's advanced search, we did not find any such tweet or deleted tweet by WSMV 4 Nashville's Twitter handle.
The viral screenshot has several grammatical errors in it, like "father of murderer girl" and "in family statement" which is an indicator that it was not tweeted by a news outlet.
The viral screenshot also does not contain a date stamp, which is usually an indication that it could be fabricated.