Posted on 10/17/2017 9:01:36 PM PDT by nickcarraway
The arrest of a 29-year-old Latino man this weekend on suspicion of starting a small fire in California’s scorched wine country ignited a firestorm of its own on right-wing media sites whose articles linked him – without evidence – to the catastrophic fires that have killed at least 28 people in the area.
Sonoma County Sheriff Rob Giordano forcefully shot down the allegations at a press conference Tuesday afternoon.
“There is a story out there that he’s the arsonist in these fires,” Giordano said. “That’s not the case. There’s no indication he’s related to these fires at all. ... I wanted to kill that speculation right now, so we didn’t have things running too far out of control.”
Right-wing websites including Breitbart and InfoWars Tuesday each published stories on the Sunday arrest of Jesus Fabian Gonzales, whom sheriff’s deputies arrested on a single count of arson.
“The U.S. Immigration & Customs Enforcement Agency (ICE) issued a detainer request on the Sonoma County Jail for Jesus Fabian Gonzalez (sic), who was arrested Sunday on suspicion of arson in Wine Country fires that have killed at least 40 residents,” says the lead paragraph of stories published on both InfoWars and Breitbart.
The websites cited a story in the Santa Rosa Press Democrat about the arrest. That story does not link Gonzales to any of the fires that broke out in the middle of the night on Oct. 8, some of them hours away in Mendocino and Yuba counties.
Gonzales was arrested at Maxwell Farms Regional Park in Sonoma on Sunday afternoon after he was seen leaving a creek bed with a plume of smoke rising behind him, Giordano said.
The fire was so small a responding sheriff’s deputy was able to mostly put it out before firefighters arrived, according to the
(Excerpt) Read more at sacbee.com ...
And there I though “Jesus” was down in Las Vegas working as a security guard at the Mandalay Bay.
“Right wing reports”. Bwahahahaha. Lots of reports on this story from different sources.
The Sacramento Bee always goes out of its way to cover for fraudulently documented foreigners.
The fact is they don’t know if this guy started those other fires.
I pass water in emergencies...
This sheriff is a bit of a suck up to the Hispanic community.
Something like 28 fires... yeah, just accidental,mno kotives, like in vegas.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.