Trans woman horrified after being wrongly identified on Reddit as Texas shooter

Posts on social media spread misinformation about the shooter that killed 19 children and two teachers at a Texas elementary school yesterday by falsely accusing a transgender woman who had no affiliation with the shooting

On Tuesday, news broke that an 18-year-old used an AR-15 and handgun to shoot and kill people at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas. The shooter was later identified as US citizen and Uvalde High school student Salvador Ramos.

Despite the identified shooter, people on Reddit and 4chan still began circulating false information that Ramos was transgender and used the photos of a transgender woman on Reddit claiming they were photos of Ramos.

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Upon learning that her photos were being used to circulate misinformation about the shooter, the woman quickly posted on Reddit informing everyone "it's not me, I don't even live in Texas".

One person wrote: "I'm really sorry that a few transphobes decided "oh hey let's bully this random person online and spread a whole misinfo campaign against her."

The woman asked others to report any posts on social media as false information in order to minimize the spread however it had already made its way to Twitter where people continued to disseminate the lies.

This included Arizona Representative Paul Gosar, 63, who seemingly believed the fake news and tweeted that the shooter was "a transsexual leftist illegal alien named Salvatore Ramos". Mr. Gosar then deleted the tweet some time after posting it.

We reached out to Representative Gosar's office for comment.

Meanwhile on social media, people tried to combat all posts that falsely identified the Reddit user as the Robb Elementary School shooter by reporting them or informing posters that they were wrong.

The woman responded to commenters who believed she was the shooter clarifying that she does not live in Texas, her name is completely different from Ramos, and she is still alive.

Ramos was killed by a Border Patrol agent who served as backup to school district officers responding to the shooting.

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