Jasmine Ladines
JDNL News
Post claimed Mallinson was the shooter
The rumour appears to have begun when an account posing as a Nevada news channel, Fox Reno
11, shared a photo of Mallinson next to one of a suspect being detained by police after Kirk's
shooting.
The person detained appeared to be
​
wearing glasses and a blue shirt, with a haircut
similar to one Mallinson had in a photo he posted on an old Twitter account. Mallinson says he
thought he had deleted the account after the platform was purchased by Elon Musk.
But the account had posted Mallinson's photo as a false close-up of the suspect, who was later
released by police.
The post also named Mallinson as the shooter and claimed he was a registered Democrat in Utah.
Charlie Kirk speaks before he is shot during Turning Point's visit to Utah Valley University in Orem, Utah, Wednesday, Sept. 10, 2025.
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The post has since been taken down but other posts sharing the same misinformation have accumulated thousands of views on X, formerly Twitter.
In a statement sent to CBC Toronto, Sinclair Broadcasting Group, which owns the Fox channel, said the post should not be attributed to the station and that they were working to get it taken down.
Craig Silverman, co-founder of Indicator, a publication focused on digital deception, said at a time when so many online tools are available for sleuthing enthusiasts, it's easy to be misled by inaccurate information.
an older man
'I feel violated': How a Toronto retiree was
falsely accused of being the Charlie Kirk
shooter
77-year-old’s name and photo shared by an account impersonating a Fox news channel
As news broke of Conservative commentator Charlie Kirk being shot in Utah, an American social media account
falsely began circulating an image of a Toronto man as the suspect. The 77-year-old retired banker sat down
with CBC Toronto to discuss how the misinformation has affected him and his family.
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A retired banker living in Toronto found himself unwillingly thrust into the centre of a political
firestorm after being falsely linked to the shooting of right-wing commentator Charlie Kirk on
Wednesday.
Michael Mallinson, 77, had no idea what was happening until he got a panicked phone call around
6 p.m., while he was taking a nap. It was his daughter, instructing him to delete his social media
because his name and photo were being spread online by an account claiming he was the suspect
in the shooting.
The problem: Mallinson says he's never set foot in Utah.​
'Alarming' how quickly misinformation can spread
Mallinson said that before he deactivated his social media accounts, he received a variety of messages from people in response to his supposed involvement in the shooting.
"I received some nasty messages on Facebook, but I also heard from people that I don't know telling me to be warned that my name and face were out there," said Mallinson. "Nevertheless, it's quite alarming that misinformation like this can spread so quickly."
Mallinson says that after deleting his social medias, he and his wife have had to reach out to their friends to inform them of the situation regarding his photo.
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He said his family reached out to the Toronto Police Service to alert them to the situation and that they seemed interested in discussing it with him, but he hadn't had the chance to connect with an officer yet.
"I feel violated," said Mallinson.
"I've got a lot of friends worldwide on Facebook that I communicate with and I had to deactivate my accounts for a while without really even being able to tell them about anything. And now my wife and I are sending out emails to say, 'Hey, this is my image and name, but it's not me.'"
"This was all shock and horror, first of all, that there'd been a shooting, but second of all that I was
in any way named or implicated in it," said Mallinson.
Kirk, a right-wing activist and close ally of U.S. President Donald Trump who played an influential
role in rallying young Republican voters, was shot around 12:20 p.m. local time in Orem, Utah, in
what the state governor called a political assassination, even as a suspect has not been formally
identified.