• KevonLooney
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    1 month ago

    This is a good lesson in how much “research” goes into most breaking news. Those “trusted news sites” just saw a common first and last name and assumed it was the same guy.

    It’s just “Michael Bolton” all over again.

    • Jiggle_Physics@lemmy.world
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      1 month ago

      I got this information from other places. It has been circulating for some hours now. However, Looking at it again, for these comments, I realized 15102 is Bethel Park, so it was the shooter, however he made the donation under age, I guess.

      • KevonLooney
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        1 month ago

        There’s no confirmation of that. This is literally just a “Michael Bolton” situation. It could be him or an unrelated person.

        My point is that the media has repeated it as fact, while the registration information used his full name (including middle) and birthday. Maybe address too (I forget). They just want to stir up drama before confirming anything.

        You learn these things doing genealogy. You need a high number of data points to confirm who someone is. People get all excited if they have the same last name as a famous person. There are literally a million people with similar last names.

        • Jiggle_Physics@lemmy.world
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          1 month ago

          This is actually a good point. I just did some internet searching and found 3 other Thomas/Tom Crooks in the Bethel Park area.