A retired banker expressed his concern after being wrongly identified online as the assassin of Charlie Kirk, despite being about 2,000 miles away at home in Canada.
Michael Marinson, 77, recounted receiving a frantic call from his daughter on Wednesday. She alerted him to numerous social media posts wrongly claiming he was the sniper who shot a conservative influencer during an event at Utah Valley University.
The misinformation seemed to have originated from unreliable websites, which mistakenly compared Marinson to someone who had been detained at the crime scene.
“I was just shocked by that,” Marinson said from Toronto.
“It’s astonishing how quickly your name and image can circulate.”
The misleading information surfaced from posts by fraudulent social media accounts.
Marinson not only faced misidentification but was also labeled as a “far-left militant” and described as “pure evil.” One claim suggested he was a registered Democrat and racked up over 3 million views amid ongoing speculation.
He began receiving direct messages on Facebook branding him a “savage” as the false narrative spread rapidly.
The retired banker reached out to local police and took several careful steps to erase his online presence. He mentioned that his role as an advocate for arthritis patients requires him to maintain an online profile.
He is contemplating legal action against those responsible for spreading the false claims.
“Because news cycles change so quickly, misinformation tends to vanish fast,” Marinson noted. “But there’s always a risk that this information could resurface later and cause problems.”
The individual who was mistakenly reported was released shortly after being taken into custody at the scene of Kirk’s shooting. The other person involved was also released, while the actual perpetrator remains at large as of early Thursday afternoon.
