NEW YORK, NY – MARCH 20: The News Corp. building on 6th Avenue, home to Fox News, the New York Post and the Wall Street Journal, on March 20, 2019 in New York City, New York. (Photo by Kevin Hagen/Getty Images)
A North Texas man is suing Fox News and several alternative media outlets for defamation after he was falsely identified as a neo-Nazi mass shooter who killed several people at an outlet mall in May 2023.
On May 6, 2023, Mauricio Garcia, 33, opened fire at the Allen Premium Outlets just north of Plano, a crowded outdoor mall with several restaurants and large shops. Eight people were killed — including a Korean American family of four that was reduced to just one child after the shooting — and seven people were injured.
The gunman was a white supremacist who ascribed to right-wing ideology and had Nazi tattoos — including a swastika and the SS logo. During the massacre, he wore a tactical vest embroidered with a RWDS (Right Wing Death Squad) patch — a modern paean to U.S.-supported military and paramilitary groups that murdered thousands of Latin American civilians beginning in the 1970s. The shooter was killed by an Allen Police Department officer at the scene.
A different Mauricio Garcia — a 36-year-old resident of Dallas County — had “nothing to do with” the violence, a lawsuit explains. Despite that, his image was used by several national media organizations in stories and commentaries about the carnage.
Those outlets, the lawsuit says “recklessly disregarded basic journalistic safeguards and published the photo of an innocent man, branding him as a neo-Nazi murderer to his local community and the nation at large. ”
“Today, my co-counsel Greg Adler and I filed suit against Fox, Newsmax, Univision, Timcast, Steven Crowder, Owen Shroyer, Simon Ateba, and Hollywood Unlocked for falsely portraying our innocent client as a neo-Nazi mass shooter,” attorney Mark Bankston said in a statement provided to Law&Crime.
The 29-page lawsuit was filed in a Travis County District Court on Friday over various kinds of articles about the outlet mall shooting.
“An article published on the FoxNews.com website used an image of innocent 36-year-old Plaintiff Mauricio Garcia to portray the gunman,” the lawsuit reads. “Fox News failed to exercise reasonable care in verifying the accuracy of the photograph published to depict the mass murderer. Fox News acted with reckless disregard for the truth and published the photo while willfully ignoring elementary journalistic precautions.”
To make matters worse, the lawsuit alleges, Fox News never took responsibility for their mistake.
“Plaintiff sent Fox News a demand for retraction,” the lawsuit reads. “Despite Plaintiff’s demand, Fox News Network, LLC refused to publish a retraction within 30 days. Indeed, no retraction has ever been published. Fox completely ignored Plaintiff and never responded.”
The lawsuit also names several other conservative media outlets that falsely identified the plaintiff as the shooter.
This misidentification occurred on two separate Newsmax shows, “The Balance with Eric Bolling” and “Greg Kelly Reports,” the lawsuit alleges. In each instance, the plaintiff’s image was used to identify the killer. In one instance, Kelly himself falsely alleged the plaintiff was also a member of an obscure prison gang, the lawsuit claims. Later, Newsmax issued an apology and said it would run an on-the-air “correction.”
Also named in the lawsuit is the media company that produces the right-wing internet show “Louder with Crowder,” along with its owner, proprietor, and titular host, Stephen Crowder.
“When covering the shooting on his show Louder with Crowder, Crowder displayed a graphic with a photograph of the Plaintiff and identified him as the shooter,” the lawsuit reads. “Moreover, Louder with Crowder’s continuing coverage of the shooting was intended to cast doubt on the information relating to the actual shooter, thereby increasing the damage to the Plaintiff.”
On one episode of his show, Crowder discussed the shooter’s widely-reported social media profile which “contained verifiable photos of the shooter which matched the hand tattoo on the shooter’s body at the scene,” according to the lawsuit as well as “extensive incontrovertible proof that it was operated by the shooter.”
Still, even after that, LouderWithCrowder.com published a story showing an image of the plaintiff as the shooter, the lawsuit alleges. This, the lawsuit suggests, was in service of a narrative disputing race-themed reporting in the wake of the shooting — specifically regarding the shooter’s white supremacist beliefs.
From the filing at length:
In the body of the article, the Louder with Crowder author stated that the website tends not “to share photos of killers, but since the media refuses to, this is the new face of white supremacy.” Immediately below this statement, Plaintiff’s photograph appeared.
Despite the claim that “the media refuse[d]” to share images of the killer, actual photos of the shooter had been published by other media organizations.
“The publications by Defendants featuring Plaintiff’s image were false, both in their particular facts and in the main point, essence, or gist in the context in which they were made,” the lawsuit alleges. “The publications by Defendants falsely used Plaintiff’s image to portray him as the perpetrator of the Allen Outlet Mall shooting.”
The lawsuit alleges defamation per se, reputational harm, and mental anguish and is seeking over $1 million in various damages plus prejudgment interest, post-judgment interest, and costs of court.
In the lawsuit, the underlying controversy is framed as an exemplary indictment of the U.S. media landscape writ large.
“This case implicates the ever-deepening dysfunction in American media,” the lawsuit reads. “As a cost-cutting measure, many of our legacy media organizations have dismantled the institutional guardrails previously in place to prevent the publication of false information. At the same time, a growing number of hyper-politicized alternative media organizations are managing to attract significant audiences using a low-cost business model that has no interest in institutional guardrails to begin with. The result is a media structure that is failing from top to bottom.”
Law&Crime reached out to Fox News, Newsmax Media, and “Louder with Crowder” for comment on this story. No responses were immediately forthcoming at the time of publication.
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