Thread by @keikoinboston

1. The problem with indie journalists and social media sleuths rushing to be first to break the names of deceased people and their killers is that invariably someone gets it wrong and circulates the name(s) of people not involved.

https://twitter.com/keikoinboston/status/1051645804103000064

2. So far I've seen two men identified as the driver in last night's deadly crash in the Uptown neighborhood of Minneapolis.

mprnews.org/story/2021/06/…

3. One name is wrong (can't even confirm the man exists - anonymous account seems to be source) and the other name seems correct but I'm waiting for official announcement before I share because it really doesn't matter if you learn his name now or 5 hours from now.

4. People are also circulating a name of the woman he killed. Again, no official confirmation and from the additional research I did, it doesn't even appear to be her full name. One local outlet reported the name with no confirmation from family or officials.

5. Had the family been notified at that point? Who knows.

6. Just found out Star Tribune has named the deceased female protester as 31-year-old Deona M. Knajdek, of Minneapolis based on confirmation from her brother. She was a mother of two and would have been 32 on Wednesday.

startribune.com/driver-hits-up…

7. Update:

Wow, the false name being circulated as the driver in the Uptown crash—“Frank Adam Lincoln"—appears to have come off the police scanner and been misinterpreted by someone who is unaware of the phonetic alphabet used by US law enforcement.

wiki.radioreference.com/index.php/Phon…

8. FAL are the first 3 letter's of the crash driver's vehicle.

Once you put out misinformation in a breaking story it becomes impossible to correct. If you don't delete the misinformation it will spread.

1: 1:08am EDT
2: 1:36am EDT
3: 2:22am EDT

9. Sources for screenshots above:

1: 1:08am EDT archive.ph/bLTkr
2: 1:36am EDT archive.ph/BeYs4
3: 2:22am EDT archive.ph/8DUim

10. At 1:43am EDT, conflict journalist Robert Evans, who has 204K followers, amplified the fake driver name "Frank Adam Lincoln" via anonymous account ProfessorPenis. Excellent fact checking.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Ev…

L: archive.ph/aYLZL
R: archive.ph/4FCxg

11. These were the first 3 accounts to tweet the fake driver name "Frank Adam Lincoln". As of right now, all of these tweets are still up.

Archive of whittcopwatch thread: archive.ph/UqFCi

twitter.com/search?q=%22Fr…

12. Some social media sleuths have misidentified a real man as the Uptown crash driver. Fortunately his name hasn't gotten as far as the fake driver name. Just got off the phone with him and he had no idea his name was being floated online as the suspected killer.

13. With the info that’s out there it took me less than 5 minutes to find the phone number for this poor guy’s employer, call them, and be transferred to his line. He answered.

14. He’s very fortunate that no one has been harassing him and his employer as has happened to other people falsely accused of committing crimes or just being awful in viral videos.

15. Correction:

This was supposed to say “crash driver’s vehicle license plate”.

https://twitter.com/keikoinboston/status/1404471138512740362

16. Earlier this month the Star Tribune also made an error by reporting from police scanner audio that Winston Smith was a murder suspect without confirming with authorities. They have been criticized for this.

https://twitter.com/keikoinboston/status/1402332193666605063