George Zimmerman Targeted In Another Death Hoax
The original site is no longer online; links go to the Internet Archive copy.
What the fact-checkers found
According to a “breaking news” post that is currently traversing the interwebs at speed, George Zimmerman has been found dead.
However, the claims in the post are untrue. George Zimmerman is not dead.
For those who may not be aware, George Zimmerman was charged and subsequently acquitted in the shooting death of Trayvon Martin in 2012. The ongoing controversy surrounding the Trayvon Martin case has meant that Zimmerman has been the subject of much media attention in the years since the shooting.
The fake-news message claims that authorities discovered Zimmerman’s dead body in a toilet stall at a Marriott hotel after a security guard noticed a putrid odour and observed a person on their knees behind the stall door.
Here’s an example of the post:
If you click on the post you will be taken to a prank website that tells you that “you got owned”. So, the Zimmerman death story is just somebody’s idea of a prank and was never intended to be taken seriously. Given Zimmerman’s history and the rather crude nature of the fictional death story, this “prank” perhaps reflects it’s author’s contempt and hatred for the man.
The prank site claims that it doesn’t support fake-news but, in fact, the material it publishes is certainly deserving of the fake-news label.
The site invites you to create your own prank story via a story template so that you can trick your friends.
Another fake news story, which first appeared back in 2014, falsely claimed that Zimmerman shot and killed himself while loading a gun. And yet another fake story falsely claimed that Zimmerman had been arrested in Ferguson, Missouri after a gun related altercation.
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