(New York) Parents of schoolchildren massacred by a killer at Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012 in the northeastern United States will be compensated in court by far-right American conspirator Alex Jones who claimed the drama was staged, the press and a lawyer said on Monday.
According to New York Times and one of the attorneys for parents of students, a Connecticut judge ruled that Mr. Jones – known for his conspiracy theories and false information – was civilly liable and therefore subject to the payment of damages after the lawsuits in defamation of six families in 2018.
Twenty little children killed
On December 14, 2012, a 20-year-old gunman broke into Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newton, Connecticut, shooting 20 children and six adults. This senseless massacre had stunned American society, then President Barack Obama even cried during a speech, and sparked yet another debate on personal gun control in the United States.
But for Alex Jones, founder of the far-right site Infowars and now banned on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, the Sandy Hook massacre would have been a staging – with actors playing the role of grieving parents. – led by the US government to take away Americans’ constitutional right to own a firearm.
The plaintiff parents had taken Alex Jones to court, demanding that he present accounting documents proving that he had made millions of dollars by spreading such misinformation.
He has since publicly admitted that the murder of children was real.
“Mr. Jones has had the opportunity to collaborate (with justice) several times, but since he chose to refuse to provide evidence to the court for more than two years, the court had no other choice than to make the decision he took today, ”said one of the parents’ lawyers, Chris Mattei, in a statement.
The lawyer admitted, however, that “the battle continued to shed light on the profound harm that Mr. Jones has inflicted on these families.”
Especially since a judge in Texas recently made the same libel rulings in favor of three other Sandy Hook families.
Jurors in Connecticut and Texas must now decide how much compensation Mr. Jones will have to pay to each of the families of children killed.