‘Connor Betts,’ Ohio boy misidentified as Dayton gunman, harassed anyway for pro-Trump views

An Ohio teenager has been the subject of Internet harassment because he has a very similar name to the Dayton gunman.

The harassment also didn’t stop after the error about “Connor Betts” was noted, according to a report in the Sandusky Register, because liberal Twitter users noted that the boy is a conservative who had expressed some support for President Trump.

“They assumed because he had the same name and supported President Donald Trump than he must be the shooter,” the boy’s father told the Register. “It’s scary how quickly people jumped to the conclusion.”

The Register did not specify the boy’s exact name or otherwise identify his father.

The harassment began when a Twitter user with almost 2,000 followers posted the boy’s photo alongside those of the Gilroy Garlic Festival shooter and the El Paso massacre suspect, claiming the nation must “address the violence of radicalized people with glasses.”

When the 15-year-old boy took to his Twitter account to say he wasn’t the Dayton gunman, part of the response was to say that it was his fault for supporting Mr. Trump.

“Well, you DO support trump soooooo (sic) who’s to say that a name is ’all you share,’” one person replied, according to the Register.

Joey Ayoub, a “blue-check”-certified Twitter user and a former editor for the international blogging site Global Voices, said that wasn’t enough, citing via screenshot a retweet of Mr. Trump the teen had made.

“Change your handle, put it on private and maybe don’t spend your time retweeting white nationalists,” Mr. Ayoub wrote to his 17,000 followers.

Jay Anderson, an Ohio lawyer whose own son is one of the boy’s classmates, responded with scorn and accused Twitter of double standards on applying its harassment rules.

“To a 15-year-old kid. Told his options are: Change your Twitter name; make your account private; and stop retweeting 4th of July posts by the President of the United States. Otherwise you deserve to be harassed. That’s the ’caring and compassionate’ left,” he wrote on Facebook.

Mr. Anderson, a former mayor of Columbia, Virginia, called out his local congressman, Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, the ranking Republican on the Oversight committee and a Freedom Caucus leader.

“I believe this young man may be one of your constituents. Jack Dorsey of Twitter doesn’t seem to care if things like this happen, at least not to conservatives. Same M.O. as what happened to the Covington kid. Jack won’t do anything about it. Perhaps you will. Thanks,” Mr. Anderson wrote to Mr. Jordan, tagging his Facebook account.

The boy’s father told the Sandusky Register that he also has plans, saying he has talked to lawyers about possible legal action.

According to the Register, as of Monday afternoon the tweet with the wrong “Connor Betts” was “still up and had almost 4,000 retweets and more than 13,000 likes.” The paper noted that a later tweet in which the user, whom the paper did not identify, acknowledged his mistake “only has 170 retweets and 1,700 likes.”