After last year’s shooting at Santa Fe, Tx., High School, a man calling himself David Briscoe who said he witnessed the carnage as a teacher of remedial English seemed to turn up everywhere, appearing in Time magazine, CNN, and the Wall Street Journal, among others. He told a similar story to the Texas Tribune, but the paper didn’t publish it because it appears it was an elaborate hoax, the Tribune reports. Briscoe said he never could return to the Houston-area school where 10 died and another 13 were injured last spring, but the school district says he was never there.
Lindsey Campbell, a spokeswoman for Santa Fe Independent School District, said it had no record of anyone named David Briscoe being employed by the district and that the district is confident no one by that name was on campus the day of the shooting last year. James Roy, a lieutenant for the Galveston County Sheriff’s Office, said the shooting was contained to the art rooms and there were no English classes on that side of the school. Four news organizations that quoted him removed any reference of Briscoe from their stories after being contacted by the Tribune. John Bridges, managing editor for the Austin American-Statesman, which also quoted Briscoe, said, “Reporters can face significant reporting hurdles in the immediate aftermath of a tragedy, and some people unfortunately attempt to take advantage of those situations and try to dupe reporters.”