Was the Apalachee High School shooter identified as a trans girl named Samantha Hyde? No, that's not true: An internet hoax that misidentifies the suspect in mass shootings as "Sam" or "Samantha Hyde" has been going around since 2015. The 14-year-old suspect in the Georgia school shooting was identified by authorities as 14-year-old Colt Gray.
The meme reappeared on X in a post (archived here) on September 4, 2024 -- the day of the Georgia shooting that left four people dead. The post was captioned:
BREAKING: Apalachee High School shooter has been identified as non-binary trans girl Samantha Hyde
This is how the post appeared at the time of writing:
(Source: X screenshot taken on Thu Sep 05 14:23:29 2024 UTC)
A press conference on the Georgia shooting was streamed live on YouTube on September 4, 2024, by NBC News station WSLS 10. At 47:54 minutes into the livestream, Chris Hosey, director of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, said:
The shooter is in custody. His name is Colt, that's C-O-L-T, Gray. He is a 14-year-old student here at the school. G-R-A-Y. He is a 14-year-old student here at the high school. Again he has been taken into custody and he will be charged with murder and he will be tried as an adult.
The picture in the X post that is the focus of this fact check is an altered image of comedian Sam Hyde, with the beard digitally edited out and several feminized features added.
The original image has appeared in hoaxes falsely identifying Sam Hyde as the shooter since 2015. The website knowyourmeme.com has an entry on Sam Hyde the comedian as well as an article about the hoaxes titled, "Why Does Sam Hyde Trend After Every Tragedy? The Prolific Meme Phenomenon Explained." One more entry in knowyourmeme.com is on a 2015 Sam Hyde hoax from a spoof @oreillyfactor account (pictured below, left).
(Source: Lead Stories composite image with KnowYourMeme.com and X screenshots taken on Thu Sep 05 16:16:35 2024 UTC)
The composite image above shows the tweet by a now-suspended fake account impersonating Bill O'Reilly from December 2, 2015. This post advanced a false identification of a suspect in the San Bernardino, California, shooting, saying it was a white supremacist named "Sam Hyde." On the right is a March 27, 2023, post containing the altered photo and caption falsely identifying the Nashville Covenant School shooter as a 31-year-old trans woman, Samantha Hyde. Lead Stories published a fact check on that claim here.
Additional Lead Stories fact checks on Sam Hyde hoaxes can be found here.
