Antonio Martin Hoax: ‘Best Friend’ Of Slain Teen Dupes HuffPost With Hoax Tweets About Witnessing His Murder, Sparks Outrage
Jesús Cristo is the newest “key witness” making headlines. According to his tweets on the morning of Dec. 24, he appeared to be the best friend of slain 18-year-old Antonio Martin. However, recent discoveries revealed his claims were all apart of a hoax. Unfortunately, the Huffington Post even fell victim to his crude prank.
According to Talking Points Memo, a man with the alias Jesús Cristo took to Twitter under the username @DesJuanTheThug. He posted several tweets about Martin’s murder as if he were there at the time of the murder. He also included the #AntonioMartin hashtag which had recently begun trending, so his first tweet quickly garnered lots of attention from other users. Apparently, the Huffington Post was among those who took notice to the tweets.
Here’s the tweet and some of the responses.
Stay strong. You will be in my thoughts @DesJuanTheThug I can't believe my best friend just died in front of me #AntonioMartin
— Diabla Red (@Geaux_Red) December 24, 2014
After all of the condolence tweets began pouring in and he was contacted by the publication, he refused to speak over the phone. So, he only replied though direct messages. Then, he decided to change his story and admitted he wasn’t a “credible source.” However, the way he worded his admission angered many Twitter users. He actually blamed the Huffington Post for believing his claims instead of taking responsibility for his part in the deception.
His tweet immediately sparked outrage and many users had no reservations about sharing their displeasure of his actions. Many Twitter users accused him of attempting to gain fame and attention from Antonio Martin’s death.
WOWWWW I HOPE THE COPS KILL U NEXT “@DesJuanTheThug: Tell The Huffington Post to do a better job of finding credible sources.”
— VB (@slimkardashian) December 24, 2014
Huffington Post writer Sebastian Murdock also addressed the situation and admitted that he’d been duped by Cristo. He also edited the story with the interview based on Cristo’s claims.
I was misled and made a foolish error. Thank you all for pointing this out. I am correcting the story to reflect as much.
— Sebastian Murdock (@SebastianMurdoc) December 24, 2014
Here’s the revised version of his story.
“A previous version of this story included an interview with a man claiming to have been at the scene of the shooting and friends with the deceased. As police have released statements saying the second person involved in the incident has fled the scene, the source is now suggesting he was never there.”
If that was his goal, its definitely safe to say he succeeded!
[Images via Twitter]
