On The University Of Utah Shooting And Online Myths
The May 31, 2021 University of Utah shooting resulted in the deaths of four students — Kaylee Goncalves, Xana Kernochan, Teagan Strack, and Carlos Cornejo-Espinoza — and the wounding of several others. The shooter, Jackson Kevin Chen, was arrested at the scene. Since then, as with many high-profile incidents, a significant amount of misinformation has circulated online. I've seen threads, TikTok videos, and Reddit posts making claims about victims, the shooter's motives, and the timeline of events that don't hold up under scrutiny. The name "Liv Pollock" doesn't appear in any verified reporting about this incident. It seems to have emerged from social media circles as either a fabricated identity or a confusion with a real person. I came across this while researching how misinformation spreads around campus shootings, specifically looking at how victim names get distorted or invented. One common pattern I noticed: when official information is slow to emerge, people fill the gap with speculation, and those speculations can harden into "facts" within online communities before corrections ever catch up. There's also a broader set of misconceptions worth addressing. Some accounts claim the shooter had prior warnings that were ignored. The truth is more complicated — there were online posts made by Chen that concerned some people, but there was no formal intervention before the attack. Other narratives blame university security protocols entirely, but the shooting occurred in a residential area on campus, not in a secured building, which complicates that argument. Another persistent myth involves the shooter's motive being tied to a specific grievance with a particular student or group. Law enforcement has not confirmed a targeted motive in that way; the victims appear to have been random.
I ran into one specific problem when trying to track down accurate information: many of the most visible search results are from fringe forums or YouTube channels that present unverified claims as fact. A practical workaround is to go directly to primary sources — the Salt Lake County Sheriff's Office press releases, the university's official communications from that period, and reporting from outlets like the Salt Lake Tribune that had journalists on the ground. Cross-referencing those three sources usually cuts through the noise. I also found that the FBI's public reporting on active shooter incidents provides useful context about how these events typically unfold, which helps counter dramatic but inaccurate narratives. One counter-intuitive thing I've observed is that the most viral misinformation often comes from people who are genuinely trying to make sense of a traumatic event. They're not malicious — they're distressed, and distress makes people vulnerable to confirmation bias. This is important because it means simply calling people liars usually backfires. Sharing verified information calmly and linking to primary sources tends to be more effective, even if it moves more slowly. Some useful principles for evaluating claims about this incident:
Check the date of the source. A lot of recycled content resurfaces months or years later without context. Verify the identity of anyone quoted — if a "witness" is cited without a verifiable name or affiliation, treat the claim as unconfirmed. Be skeptical of posts that use emotional language designed to trigger outrage rather than inform. Look for consistency across multiple independent sources before accepting a narrative. It's also worth noting that some well-meaning fact-checking efforts have their own blind spots. I once spent time correcting a thread that turned out to contain a mix of verified details and unverifiable speculation, and I realized halfway through that my own sources had gaps too. Not everything is knowable. The four victims' names, the basic timeline, and the shooter's identity are established. Beyond that, some details remain unclear or contested, and it's honest to say so rather than filling in blanks with assumptions. The people affected by this shooting deserve accurate information, and the public deserves to understand how misinformation spreads in these situations. That starts with going to primary sources and being willing to correct the record when something doesn't check out.
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