Stop sharing this photo falsely claiming to identify Stoneman Douglas shooter

ByCraig Haley

An image of a man is being circulated on social media prolifically, claiming to show a photo of the Stoneman Douglas shooter, Nikolas Cruz. The image is frequently attached to a caption claiming that the shooter was a member of Antifa.

However the image doesn’t show Nikolas Cruz. A reverse image search reveals the photo was posted a number of years ago and leads to a [now disabled] Imgrun account belonging to a man named Marcel Fontaine. It doesn’t appear that Fontaine has any association with the shooting at Stoneman Douglas High School whatsoever.

The image was first posted by a fake Antifa Twitter account by the name Laguna Beach Antifa and was soon retweeted thousands of times. The account claimed the image showed Nikolas Cruz wearing an Antifa t-shirt and implored others not to share the photo “because Antifa don’t need any more attention” in the full knowledge that that is exactly what other Twitter users would do.


Sponsored Content. Continued below...




At the time of writing, there is no evidence that Nikolas Cruz was attached to the Antifa movement, despite the claims made by a number of the inevitable and characteristic conspiracy videos that have risen from the woodwork in the direct aftermath of the shooting. The only hint to Cruz’s political leanings currently comes from a photo on one of his social media accounts of a Make America Great Again cap, but it is unknown whether Cruz subscribed to either left or right leaning politics.

This is another typical example of trial by social media where social media users willingly disseminate information that personally identifies an individual and accuses them of a crime, despite none of those details being verified. It is a trait we often encounter online, despite it being both irresponsible and potentially dangerous. We discuss trial by social media in our blog post here.


Sponsored Content. Continued below...




The Imgrun account belonging to Marcel Fontaine has since been disabled after his photo circulated across the Internet.

For more fake news stories being circulated about the Stoneman Douglas school shooting, read our full article here.

Keep up-to-date with all our latest articles. Follow us on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.

Continued below...


Thanks for reading! But before you go… as part of our latest series of articles on how to earn a little extra cash using the Internet (without getting scammed) we have been looking into how you can earn gift vouchers (like Amazon vouchers) using reward-per-action websites such as SwagBucks. If you are interested we even have our own sign-up code to get you started. Want to learn more? We discuss it here. (Or you can just sign-up here and use code Nonsense70SB when registering.)

Become a Facebook Supporter. For 0.99p (~$1.30) a month you can become a Facebook fan, meaning you get an optional Supporter Badge when you comment on our Facebook posts, as well as discounts on our merchandise. You can subscribe here (cancel anytime.)