Toronto man fights fake news that he shot U.S. influencer Charlie Kirk

Michael Mallinson had never met Charlie Kirk, nor had he ever heard the name of the American right-wing commentator who was shot dead in broad daylight at a Utah college event on Wednesday.

But the retired Torontonian has done some research about him after his death.

“I gather that he appeals to young conservatives. I’m an old socialist. I guess that’s the best way I could put it,” Mallinson said in a phone interview.

They would never have come across each other, but a piece of viral online misinformation has tied Mallinson to Kirk’s story. Now the former banker, 77, is fighting to make the truth understood: he is decidedly not the person who put a bullet in the controversial commentator’s neck.

Mallinson said he and his family are horrified to see his name and likeness falsely connected on a variety of social media platforms to a “heinous crime” he did not commit.

“I just felt shocked and in horror. I was bemused. I wasn’t quite believing it,” the retiree said. “I was bewildered why this would have happened.”

He found out about his weird newfound fame after waking up from a post-shopping trip nap on Wednesday to a call from his daughter. She was begging him to delete his social media accounts.

“She was a bit panicked and she was, you know, kind of shouting at me that I had to do it now, now, and I didn’t quite understand what was happening,” he said.

After the call, Mallinson said he Googled his name and came across posts that wrongly labelled him as a Utah Democrat who had shot and killed Kirk.

It seems to have spread from a fake news account that misidentified him as a man whom police arrested then released in the wake of the shooting. Why anyone would make that link is a mystery to Mallinson.

“We’re both old, we’re both bald, we’re both spectacled, but otherwise I don’t think we look alike at all,” he said.

The person who actually assassinated Kirk remained unidentified and a manhunt was still underway Thursday evening. Authorities announced they recovered a high-powered rifle that may have been used in the deadly attack, and released photos of an alleged gunman whom investigators believe blended into the campus crowd because he looked “college-age.”

The slaying of the 31-year-old influencer, who was a close ally of U.S. President Donald Trump’s, drew widespread condemnation in Canada. Prime Minister Mark Carney offered condolences to Kirk’s family, and the Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre also strongly denounced his shooting.

As his name and face went viral, Mallinson said that he and his family started getting hate online. One person wrote to tell him he was a “savage.”

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His daughter began to receive ugly messages, too, like one that said something to the effect of, “may God make him live in pain for the rest of his life,” Mallinson recalled.

“I’m not happy about it and my family is, especially my wife, is quite distressed about it all,” he said.

Mallinson lost access to important connections in the scramble to delete his social media accounts, he said. In retirement, he helped found the Canadian Spondyloarthritis Association, an organization that supports people with the chronic arthritic disease. He made lots of friends from around the world in his role engaging online as volunteer president.

Friends from as far as Poland, India and the United Kingdom have sent him emails to check in on him after the fake news spread, he said, adding he has had to reach out to individual loved ones and explain he was not the shooter.

“It’s a pain having to do it. It would be much easier to do it on social media, but I deleted my accounts.”

A full 24 hours after his pictures were shared widely in connection to Kirk’s death, Mallinson’s face was still appearing next to posts bearing the misinformation. He said he has not contacted any social media companies to take down the posts.

Instead, he has been trying to get the word out as widely as possible that the narrative that has taken over his life is “totally false.”

In the end, he said, “I’m hoping it’s going to blow over.”

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