Does a viral clip show real "transgender Providence Police Department spokesperson Lyle Culpepper" demanding that the public stop saying "the Brown shooter"? No, that's not true: The person in the video is comedian L.E. Staiman. In interviews, Staiman has said that he believes his videos are so absurd that people can easily understand they are parody and satire.
The claim appeared in a post (archived here) on X where it was published on December 18, 2025. It opened:
🚨🚨 BREAKING: Transgender Providence Police Department spokesperson Lyle Culpepper asks the public to stop referring to the radical Islamic shooter at Brown University as 'the brown shooter', even though he is quite literally THE BROWN SHOOTER because he committed a mass shooting at Brown University. Political correctness is a cancer that is destroying America... And they all always seem to look like Lyle. TOTAL FREAKS.
The post shared what seemed to be footage of a Providence Police Department press briefing. The lower banner in the clip said:
OFFICIALS SPEAK ON BROWN UNIV. SHOOTING INVESTIGATION.
This is what the video looked like on X at the time of writing:
(Image source: Lead Stories screenshot of post at x.com/JoshHall2024)
In the clip, the person in glasses says:
'SPOKESPERSON': We're asking the public to please stop referring to him as 'the brown shooter', as this has an inherently Islamophobic connotation.
QUESTION: No, it's actually 'brown' because of Brown University...
'SPOKESPERSON': 'Brown' because of the university, not because of the color of skin, right? We are also asking the public to please stop posting photos of 'Mufasa Carmax'. We would, for the sake of diversity, really like to pin this on a different ethnicity, because it is unfair to keep blaming Islam for every violent act they commit. Let's do better.
As the "spokesperson" mentioned "Mufasa Carmax", the video showed an image of Mustapha Kharbouch, a Brown University student whose profile was removed from a university page. In its archived version, Kharbouch was described as a "third-generation Palestinian refugee born and raised in Lebanon."
None of that, however, came from any official sources. In reality, "spokesperson" Lyle Culpepper doesn't work for the Providence Police Department. It's the professional pseudonym of L.E. Staiman, a comedian whose style is to digitally insert himself into news-related clips and share them on social media. Talking to the Times of Israel (archived here) in March 2025, L.E. Staiman said that he picks the topics where he sees "obvious hypocrisy" and that his comedy relies on things "that are being said in real life." However, according to him, "a level of absurdity" in his videos allows most people to "process the fact that this is parody and this is satire."
The original footage of the police press conference seen here doesn't show "Lyle Culpepper" or anyone else who looks like L.E. Staiman.
The shooting at Brown University took place on December 13, 2025, leaving two people dead and nine injured (archived here). Five days later, the authorities announced (archived here) that the suspect was found deceased from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. That person was not Mustapha Kharbouch. The suspect was identified as Claudio Neves Valente, 48 (archived here).
