Does a video show looters caught in the act of carrying a big-screen TV and other items from a home in the path of the fire burning Los Angeles County? No, that's not true: The men are not looters but the resident's family, helping save some of her belongings. The video clip on social media aligns with events captured in live on-scene reporting from the Los Angeles television station KTLA 5.
The video clip appeared in a post (archived here) on Instagram on January 9, 2025. It was captioned:
Fires and looting. A regular Democrat run city.
There's nothing to see here.
This is how the post appeared at the time of writing:
(Source: Instagram screenshot taken on Fri Jan 10 15:34:13 2025 UTC)
With smoke and flames behind the home on January 8, 2025, a KTLA 5 reporter interviewed a resident who had been told to evacuate. She explained why they had waited until the last minute before removing what they could. Asked who was helping her, the woman introduced the men as her brothers, who she said worked for the city of Pasadena.
As noted by a comment under the video, the recording of a KTLA 5 broadcast posted on Instagram (archived here) by the City of Compton's District 2 Councilman Andre Spicer (archived here) on January 8, 2025, shows the resident's family helping her move some belongings from her home. The home's street number, 161, is visible in the clip in the news station's footage (pictured above and below). Spicer's caption reads:
@cityofcomptonfiredepartment out there in the trenches fighting the San Gabriel Fires and representing well 🫡🚒
The chyron on the footage of the live KTLA reporting reads:
Deadly Eaton Fire Burns 10,600+ Acres In San Gabriel Valley
Breaking News
(Source: Instagram screenshot taken on Fri Jan 10 15:51:23 2025 UTC)
At the time of writing, Lead Stories had yet to locate an original copy of this broadcast footage on the KTLA website (archived here) or YouTube channel. The clip posted by Spicer does not contain the footage of the men carrying a big-screen TV out of the home, but it does show the doorway of the house standing open. Near the end of Spicer's clip, the camera pans to show a crowd of bystanders, and this exchange between the woman and the reporter can be heard:
Reporter: Tell me, how did you get all these people? Are they all friends, family ...?
Woman: They are. They are my brothers. My brothers work for the City of Pasadena. They wet the vegetation before the firefighters came.
It is unclear which of the men in the crowd (pictured below) are her brothers. One man is wearing a red tracksuit, white mask and grey knit cap and appears in the clip carrying a TV from the house with another man.
(Source: Instagram screenshot taken on Fri Jan 10 16:22:35 2025 UTC)
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Additional Lead Stories fact checks on claims involving the Los Angeles fires can be found here.
