True, the odds are very remote but... There are something like 9000 to 14000 objects in orbit (depending on what size you go down to). There are only so many “good” orbital trajectories.
Imagine all those satellites distributed over the earth’s surface. The earth is 510 million square kilometers, and the lower 48 is 8 million, which is 1.57% of the earth’s surface. 1.57% of the satellite population (high end of your range) is 220 satellites of the lower 48. If those were airplanes, it would be a tiny fraction of the number we have. But aircraft tend to concentrate (and crash) near airports, and are limited to a thin band of a couple of miles of altitude. Midair collisions away form airports do happen, as in Brazil a few years back. But that was tow aircraft on exactly the same GPS controlled altitude and path.
No, this just doesn’t pass the smell test, and I think they’re hiding the truth on this. If it were a satellite taken out by a small debris, I’d be far less skeptical.
There were two known previous collisions of tracked objects. This was the first collision of a tracked object with another tracked object that had an active payload.