A Kansas man has filed a lawsuit against Rep. Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.) after the lawmaker falsely identified him as an illegal immigrant who carried out a deadly attack at the Kansas City Chiefs Super Bowl parade last month.
Denton Loudermill was one of thousands of Chiefs fans who turned out on Feb. 14 to celebrate their team’s Super Bowl victory when the deadly shooting occurred.
After the attack, photos of Loudermill in handcuffs began circulating on social media. Loudermill’s lawyers explained in the complaint that their client was never detained as a suspect in the shooting.
They said Loudermill was stopped by officers responding to the scene while he was leaving the parade and told he was moving too slowly.
“The police officer handcuffed and sat Plaintiff on a curb,” the lawsuit states.
He was there for about 10 minutes and people started to take his photo which spread online and was ultimately picked up by Burchett who falsely accused him of being “one of the Kansas City Chiefs victory parade shooters” and “an illegal Alien.”
According to the lawsuit, Burchett’s Feb. 15 false post was reposted more than 21,000 times and had 7.2 million views by the morning of Feb. 18 when he deleted it.
“At no time was Plaintiff an ‘alien,’ an ‘illegal alien,’ nor a ‘shooter’ and the assertions to the contrary were false and were circulated widely among Defendant’s followers and Defendant’s false assertions about Plaintiff were reposted and widely circulated to more than one million people around the world,” Loudermill’s attorneys wrote.
“Defendant knew or should have known that his inflammatory post on social media would be seen and read nationwide,” Loudermill’s lawyers added.
Loudermill is suing Burchett for false light invasion of privacy and is seeking damages in excess of $75,000.
