The sister of a man who was beaten to death at a gas station in Philadelphia’s Olney section last year is reliving her pain after a website used the tragic story to tell a false news report.
“Our family is outraged,” Diane Barnes told NBC10. “We lived through the pain back last year when this happened to my brother. To see this back on the Internet and everywhere and people comment and what scares me is that some people don’t know the truth.”
Barnes’ brother, Robert Barnes, 51, died in November, 2015; seven months after he was beaten by a group of adults and teens at a Philadelphia gas station. Police said Barnes was pumping gas for spare change on April 7, 2015 outside the Sunoco Gas Station at 5th Street and Somerville Avenue in Philadelphia’s Olney section. A teen falsely accused Barnes of hitting him and told his family which prompted a brutal attack that was caught on surveillance video, according to investigators.
The video shows a group of people jump from a minivan and rush towards Barnes as he stands outside the gas station. They then punch him, stomp on him and strike him with a hammer before jumping back into the minivan and speeding off. The attack left Barnes in a coma for seven months. He died from his injuries on November 25, 2015. Three teens pleaded guilty in Barnes’ murder. Three women are also facing murder charges.
While Barnes died nearly a year ago, the story of his death resurfaced just last week after it was picked up by the website Christian Times News. Instead of reporting the truth however, the website used an image from the surveillance video of the beating to report a fake story, falsely claiming the people in the video were anti-Donald Trump protesters who beat up a homeless veteran. The fake story was also posted on the Facebook Page “Rep. Trey Gowdy for Speaker of the House.”
Both posts, which were taken down Tuesday, linked to several real reports on the incident, including one from NBC10, causing the story to trend over the weekend. It confused many readers who were learning about the story for the first time. Diane Barnes told NBC10 she found out about the fake reports Sunday when her friend shared it on her Facebook page.
“I just couldn’t believe it,” she told NBC10 Tuesday night. “I was in disbelief. I just could not believe what I was reading.”
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Barnes admits she has mixed feelings about the story of her brother’s murder resurfacing.
“They’re reading the story and those people that weren’t aware of what really happened may believe this story and that’s upsetting to me,” she said. “Then there’s the other side of me that says, you know, it’s back on the frontlines, my brother’s story, which is a good thing. But I just don’t know who’s going to believe the real story. So I’m happy it’s back on the frontline but not in this way. Not in this form.”
Barnes said many of her friends helped to clear up the confusion by commenting on social media.
“A lot of my friends, they took it upon themselves to comment and say that this happened last year, this was a friend of ours, this was a phony story,” she said. “There’s a real story, another story to this video you’re watching.”
Kelly McBride, the Vice President of the Poynter Institute, told NBC10 since the election many false stories with a political angle are appearing online.
“If this allows you to make an argument that dismisses all the Trump protesters or all the Trump supporters then it probably is too good to be true,” McBride said.
McBride says companies like Facebook and Google are working to stop the false stories. Red flags for spotting false news reports are an unfamiliar website, a story that appears to be vague or a story that isn’t reported on by two or three other outlets.
“Yeah it’s frustrating but I also feel like it’s a challenge that we have to deal with in an age of technology,” McBride said.
You can also visit the websites Fact Check and Politifact to check the authenticity of a story.
