A man from suburban Kansas City was falsely accused in social media posts of being a mass shooter at the Super Bowlparade for the Kansas City Chiefs last month. And now that man has filed a defamation lawsuit against Rep. Tim Burchett, a Republican from Tennessee, who helped spread the inaccurate claim, according to KCTV.
Burchett shared a photo of Denton Loudermill on X, with the caption, âOne of the Kansas City Chiefs victory parade shooters has been identified as an illegal Alien.â
Aside from falsely implicating Loudermill in the shooting on Feb. 14, Burchett also called him an âillegal alien,â another statement that simply wasnât true. The mass shooting killed one person and wounded 22 others, including 11 children. Three peopleâ23-year-old Lyndell Mays, 18-year-old Dominic Miller, and 20-year-old Terry Youngâhave been charged in the shooting.
Loudermill was just trying to leave the parade area after the chaos of the shooting and tried to duck under some police tape, according to his lawsuit. Loudermill, who wasnât charged or cited for anything, was only briefly detained, but photos of him in handcuffs started to circulate online with a sinister narrative.
Five days after his original tweet, Rep. Burchett deleted it, blaming âincorrect news reportsâ as the source of his information. But he didnât retract the claim that Loudermill was one of the shooters.
âIt has come to my attention that in one of my previous posts, one of the shooters was identified as an illegal alien. This was based on multiple, incorrect news reports stating that. I have removed the post,â Burchett tweeted.
It has come to my attention that in one of my previous posts, one of the shooters was identified as an illegal alien. This was based on multiple, incorrect news reports stating that. I have removed the post. pic.twitter.com/11KlFIyvF9
â Tim Burchett (@timburchett) February 19, 2024
Burchett blamed ânews reports,â but there wasnât a single reputable news outlet that claimed the man in that photo was an illegal alien nor someone whoâd been arrested for perpetrating the shooting. It was all bullshit being peddled by far-right X accounts like End Wokeness, an anonymous account popular with Xâs owner Elon Musk.
Burchett appears to have gotten his ânewsâ from X accounts that have no problem with spreading false information that fits with their narrative.
In fact, many X accounts used photos of Denton Loudermill while falsely claiming he was someone named âSahil Omar,â a name thatâs been used previously by right-wing trolls to insist all mass shooters must be foreign-born. The fictional âSahile Omarâ has been blamed for other crimes, including mass shootings in Las Vegas and Prague, according to the BBC.
Loudermillâs lawsuit is seeking $75,000 in damages from Burchett, according to KCTV, though itâs not yet clear if heâs going to sue others who helped spread the false claims on social media.
âThe false identification of Plaintiff as an âillegal alienâ and âshooterâ has caused [Loudermill] in Kansas to receive death threats and to suffer mental distress from having been exposed to public view and more specifically to experience periods of anxiety, agitation, and sleep disruption and such damages are likely to continue into the future,â the lawsuit states, according to KCTV.
âThe acts and conduct of Defendant caused Plaintiff to suffer injuries and actual damages including mental distress, sleeplessness, anxiety, and agitationâŠas well as emotional suffering, humiliation, embarrassment, insult, and inconvenience.â