Francine Wheeler said that she went to a meeting for moms who had lost their children as a result of gun violence around three years after her son Ben died in the Sandy Hook Elementary School tragedy.
She attempted to console another woman who was crying in the conference elevator when she saw her. She discovered that three weeks prior, the woman’s 19-year-old son had perished in a shooting.
Wheeler said that the stranger’s tone abruptly altered when she explained how her own kid passed away.
Wheeler recalled, “She said, “You’re lying, that didn’t happen.”
The parents of Sandy Hook victims have been describing in court evidence over the last almost four weeks how conspiracy theorist Alex Jones’s claims that the massacre was a fabrication turned their personal grief into an even worse nightmare.
The case will conclude with closing arguments on Thursday after Jones opted not to testify in his own defense.
After that, the jury will begin debating on how much money to give the plaintiffs since Jones has already been declared the winner of the defamation case.
Jones claimed on his program Infowars shortly after the incident that the government had engineered the tragedy as an excuse to limit gun ownership.
According to their evidence, the words had a catastrophic impact on the victims’ relatives. The family said that followers of the Sandy Hook hoax began to stalk and threaten them.
Unknown people at the door
David Wheeler, Francine Wheeler’s husband, said that since they believed Ben was still alive, people had been to their house and demanded to see him. Eventually, David was compelled to equip the home with a security camera system.
David said that he has been bullied and called a “liar” on Facebook. He was recruited to play a role in the shooting, as shown by clips from his failing acting career.
One of the plaintiffs in the Connecticut trial is FBI agent Bill Aldenberg, who was one of the law enforcement personnel that responded to the incident.
Aldenberg said how Sandy Hook interrogators started to assert that he and David Wheeler were the same person and had taken on various roles in the “staged” massacre throughout his time on the stand.
Aldenberg claimed to have seen several videos online showing individuals contrasting images of Wheeler and himself from his reaction to the incident.
Aldenberg said that even while he believed he could withstand the internet abuse and doubts about his status as an actual FBI agent, he still felt bad for Wheeler’s suffering.
He has endured enough pain, Aldenberg said.
How harassment resulted from a grin
The majority of Jones’ doubt may have fallen on Robbie Parker, who lost his daughter Emilie in the incident.
Jones singled out Parker, claiming that his grin immediately before holding a news appearance the evening after his daughter died made him seem like an actress.
Parker said during his testimony that he had rapidly smiled at the moment because his father had addressed him by a pet term just before he began.
Parker said that he has struggled for years with the weight of believing that his little moment of laughing contributed to the doubt. Eventually, he and his family relocated across the nation to escape Newtown.
“I wasn’t sure if I could relocate anyplace in the nation and still find this sort of family of individuals who understood precisely what we were going through.
However, I felt so ashamed that I thought I was to blame for everything since I was the first to speak out, the first to laugh, and the object of the attack,” said Parker.
Parker reportedly recalled being contacted by an irate Seattle resident who accused him of fabricating details of the incident.
Parker said that the guy approached him and enquired as to whether or not he had a murdered daughter. Parker believed the guy would make an effort to console him. The guy cursed at him and enquired about his nighttime sleeping habits.
Parker said, “He had such animosity against me, for who he felt I was.
It’s impossible to cry
The Sandy Hook skeptics, according to Carlee Soto-Parisi, who lost her sister Victoria in the massacre, found it impossible to grieve for her. The majority of the casualties were youngsters in the first-grade class taught by Victoria.
Soto-Parisi remarked, “It’s painful, heartbreaking, and paralyzing.” “You’re always protecting yourself, your family, and your loved ones, so you can’t mourn properly.”
In one of the most well-known photos to emerge from the disaster, Soto-Parisi is seen sobbing on the phone after going to the site.
She said that others who agreed with Jones’ theory that the massacre was staged overanalyzed the picture online, stating it proved she was the same “crisis actress” who had been used repeatedly by comparing her to ladies captured in photographs at previous terrible incidents like the Boston Bombing.
in the graveyard snooping
In the incident, Jennifer Hensel lost her daughter Avielle. Years later, Jeremy Richman, her spouse and Avielle’s father, committed suicide.
Hensel said that she thought about how to best honor her husband and delayed getting him a burial site at the local cemetery where Avielle was buried.
Later, she heard from neighbors who claimed to have seen somebody visiting the cemetery in search of her husband’s gravestone. Hensel said that when they didn’t locate it, the hoaxers used that information as proof that her husband hadn’t really passed away.
Hensel is now raising her two other children alone and claims to have done her best to protect them from what occurred at Sandy Hook and the conspiracy theorists.
“There are many individuals who may harm them and who ought not to harm them, discuss them, or even be aware of them. They will eventually be aware of it because of what transpired after 12/14 and this farce, but for the time being, I want to keep them as naive as possible,” explained Hensel.
Hensel said, “I’m going to have to explain a lot, and that’s going to be very, really hard, when they’re old enough to find out.”