Friday, August 9, 2019

Reports of a shooting

At 12:27 PM on Wednesday, Mike Valerio of WUSA9 tweeted out that there had been reports of a shooting at the USA Today building.


At 12:45, Valerio tweeted out that he'd heard from the FBI and there was not a shooting.


Which is good.  But, how does that happen?  I mean...I know how it happens.  There were reports of a shooting, and those reports turned out to be a mistake.  It's not like Valerio did anything wrong by tweeting about the reports.  You kind of have to do that, if you're a reporter.

This other tweet is kind of confusing, though.  The guy isn't a reporter, but he does have a verified checkmark.  He says he got a text message from a family member regarding an active shooter at the USA Today building.  I guess that family member was mistaken:

 An article on USAToday.com later in the day had more on the incident:
Heavily armed police officers evacuated USA TODAY's headquarters in the Washington suburbs Wednesday after authorities said they received a report of a person with a weapon that ultimately proved to be unsubstantiated.  
... 
Police received a call at 11:56 a.m., reporting that a man with gun was seen at the building, which holds the headquarters for USA TODAY, its parent company, Gannett Co., and offices for a variety of other businesses. The incident involved a company other than Gannett located in the building, Roessler said. 
After reading the article, I'm still not 100% sure happened.  (It sounds like an ex-employee of one of the other companies in the building may have sent a threatening text message?)  It doesn't seem like the type of situation where the authorities are going to explain in great detail precisely what happened.
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