Retired Chicago Firefighter Accused Of Participating In Capitol Riot. He Was 600 Miles Away
And Twitter made it all possible.
Retired Chicago firefighter David Quintavalle had a pretty normal Wednesday last week. He went grocery shopping at Aldi in the morning, and spent the evening celebrating his wife’s birthday with home-cooked lobster and steak. His son, a Chicago police officer, celebrated as well. The next day, Quintavalle went to Home Depot.
None of this should be news, because these are things that normal people do regularly. But for Quintavalle, an otherwise normal day was shattered when he was publicly and falsely accused of being the man who attacked a U.S. Capitol Police officer with a fire extinguisher. That officer, Brian Sicknick, later died from his injuries.
“Some woman from British Columbia showed the [surveillance] picture of the guy wearing CFD stocking cap and a beard like I’ve had, and file footage when I was protesting the city inappropriately scoring the fire lieutenants exam, and said, ‘This is the guy.’ And the ball started rolling. Everybody started saying, ‘Here’s the guy,'” he added.
Within hours of the false identification, Quintavalle started receiving phone calls from strangers calling him a “f***ing murderer.” Reporters camped out in front of his house....
“Social media has killed David Quintavalle. This has been an absolute disaster to him personally and his family. There’s a cop car outside his house. It’s over a picture that kind of looks like him because people sitting behind a keyboard with no proof or evidence are throwing out these tweets, and they’re wrong. Holy smokes, it’s eye-opening how terrifying social media can be when something like this happens,”
Question: what liability does Twitter have for destroying this man's life? Jack Dorsey and his band of punks made it possible for him to be attacked. Dorsey already makes editorial decisions about what gets posted on Twitter. David Quintavalle should file a very, very large lawsuit against Dorsey, Twitter, and the goons working for him.
