MA Man Sues Conspiracy Site That Said He Was Parkland Shooter

WORCESTER, MA — Marcel Fontaine was not the shooter at Marjory Stoneham Douglas High School. He has never even been to Florida. But a widely circulated conspiracy story said he was the one who killed 17 people during the February shooting in Parkland. Now Fontaine is suing.

Fontaine, who lives in Worcester, said right-wing conspiracy theory website InfoWars falsely identified him as the shooter of the horrific rampage. He filed suit Monday against the site and its founder Alex Jones in a state district court in Austin, Texas.

InfoWars used a photo depicting Fontaine in a red shirt featuring several communist leaders partying. The story read in part the "alleged photo of the suspect shows communist garb" and tied him to the Islamic State. It was circulated among several right-wing websites and across thousands of social media accounts.

InfoWars said it found the photo on a Japanese cartoon image board.

The actual shooter was later identified as Nikolas Cruz. He was arrested and charged with capital murder.

InfoWars has since removed the story, and a retraction can now be found at the story's original URL.

"On Feb. 14, 2018, we showed a photograph of a young man that we had received and incorrectly stated that it was an alleged photo of the suspected shooter at Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. Infowars promptly removed the contents of this page within hours after posting on Feb. 14, 2018. The young man whose picture was shown later contacted us and asked that we take the photo down, but we had already done so several days before. We regret that this error occurred."

InfoWars did not respond to a request for comment.

InfoWars, based in Texas, has been ground zero for numerous outlandish and controversial conspiracy theories. Jones has claimed the Sandy Hook shooting never occurred and propagated that Parkland survivor David Hogg is an actor working on behalf on gun control activists.

"Mr. Jones’ recklessly opportunistic career is littered with the fallout from his willful pattern of malicious defamation, most notably a series of high-profile incidents over the past few years," the lawsuit reads.

Despite InfoWars' reputation, Fontaine's legal team said it needs to be held to a higher standard.

"It's the same as if the New York Times or Washington Post did it," Bill Ogden, one of Fontaine's attorneys, told Patch. "They count themselves as the real journalists and truth seekers of the world and to do something like this specifically; It's not only negligent but there is malice behind it because it's so reckless."

Ogden said InfoWars obtains some 30 million views a month. The lawsuit estimated it reached hundreds of millions of people.

"We sent them a letter that demanded they do a correction," Ogden said. "They ignored it."

It was only Monday - more than a month after the original post - that the story's original URL had an editor's note, Ogden said. On Tuesday that was switched to a retraction.

"It was posted on Twitter and retweeted," Ogden said. "It's been shared millions and millions of times now."

Fontaine, who Ogden said will seek counseling after the incident, is seeking unspecified damages worth more than $1 million.

Ogden said the legal team has theories on how InfoWars ended up with the photo, but said his client has "zero connection whatsoever" to the Parkland shooting or Cruz. He has never even been to Florida, the lawsuit said.

The lawsuit also names Kit Daniels, a writer at InfoWars, and Free Speech Systems, LLC, as defendants.

"In sum, Infowars is a business built on the idea of generating revenue from the paranoia stoked by its reckless defamation," the lawsuit reads.

Screenshot of tweet featuring photo of Fontaine posted by Infowars