A high-profile crime often sets social media abuzz with tips and advice from amateur internet sleuths, hunting down the suspect.
But after UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson was gunned down in New York City this week without a suspect in sight, a rare event occurred in the world of true crime: online silence from followers and analysts.
“I haven’t seen a single video that’s beating the drum of ‘we have to find him,’ and it’s unique,” said Michael McWhorter, known as TizzyEnt on TikTok, where he posts true crime and viral news. 6.7 million followers. “And in some cases of some kind of violence, I’ll be seeing that.”
A gunman, while on foot, fatally shot a 50-year-old man outside a New York City hotel on Wednesday, police said. Shell casings found at the site “refused,” “self-defense” and “removal” from him, according to a New York City law enforcement official briefed on the investigation.
Thompson’s targeted killing has sparked online praise from people angry about the state of US health care. Tens of thousands of people have shown support on social media for the killing or sympathy. Some even appeared to celebrate it.
“The amount of social media posts praising and praising the killing of UnitedHealth CEO Brian Thompson is relevant,” Alex Goldenberg, senior advisor at The Network Contagion Research Institute at Rutgers University previously told NBC News. (Thompson was CEO of UnitedHealthcare, not UnitedHealth Group, the parent company.)
In a statement, Thompson’s family said he was an “unbelievably loving father” to his two sons and “will be greatly missed.”
“We are saddened to hear about the senseless killing of our beloved Brian,” it said. “Brian was an incredibly loving, generous, talented man who lived life to the fullest and touched many lives.”
However, some of the most popular internet sleuths stayed out of the investigation.
“We don’t care,” Savannah Sparks, who has 1.3 million followers on her TikTok account — where she tracks down and exposes people who are racist or criminal in viral videos — said of the awareness campaign. shooter. He added that, instead of delusion, his community has “thoughts and prayers. That’s, you know, a complaint that was rejected on my prayers there,” meaning talking and comforting.
Although Sparks, 34, has been tapped by law enforcement in the past to help train police on how to find suspects online, according to emails seen by NBC News, he said this time he’s not interested in helping police.
Sparks, who also works in health care as a lactation consultant and has a doctorate in medicine, did not mince words when asked if her community was working to find a suspect in Thompson’s murder.
“Of course f— no,” he said.
Another popular TikTok sleuth, thatdaneshguy, who has two million followers on the platform, made a video criticizing the health industry, saying he would not try to identify the killer. “I should not encourage violence. I don’t have to condone violence in any way. But I don’t have to help either,” he said.
This sentiment among some content creators comes amid concerns over treatment in the US after the massacre.
A Gallup poll released Friday found that Americans believe the quality of health care is at a 24-year low. Those polled said health coverage was even worse, with 54% saying it was good or bad.
Online experts have helped the FBI identify hundreds of Capitol rioters and arrest prisoners who were previously arrested on January 6 for crimes that eluded the department’s investigation, in one case even finding evidence that Proud Boy beat an officer in the middle of his treason trial. .
And when Gabby Petito, 22, went missing while documenting her cross-country adventures on social media with her fiance, online frenzy jumped into action. It was later discovered that Petito was killed by her lover Brian Laundrie, who died by suicide.
At least one person who tried to help find Thompson’s killer was criticized on X, formerly known as Twitter, for doing so.
In a tweet, Riley Walz, a software engineer, said he was “confident” the shooter escaped on a bike after looking up data from Citi Bike’s bikeshare program. He said he told the police this information.
But a source close to Lyft, which works with Citi Bike, later said the NYPD told the company directly that the incident did not involve the bike program.
Walz declined to comment Friday. Since his post, some X users have called him a “snitch.” McWhorter, or TikTok’s TizzyEnt, said getting back at those who tried to help could make others reluctant to intervene.
“If you’re seeing it in a place like this, I have to imagine that affects some people’s decision,” he said.
But mostly, McWhorter said, “There’s something strange, this vibe is like, I don’t see a bunch of people just feeling it right away.”
McWhorter posted his first video about the incident on Friday night. The nearly two-minute video was about “how many people are useless.”
Sukrit Venkatagiri, an assistant professor of computer science at Swarthmore College, said many people feel a lack of connection with the super rich.
“They don’t really sympathize with the victim in this situation,” Venkatagiri said.
Venkatagiri, who has studied the harms of false information and disinformation as well as crowdsourced investigations, said, anecdotally, he has seen a lack of searches for Thompson’s killer on sites like the subreddit r/Reddit Bureau of Investigations, a fake online page on Reddit that. it says “using the power of the internet to solve real world problems.”
“People are not very motivated, from a response perspective, to help the victim in this case,” Venkatagiri said.
In addition to the lack of online intelligence, which can sometimes muddy law enforcement investigations, there has been an abundance of information released by the New York Police Department.
Police have released two images of a “person of interest,” including one of him smiling while using a fake ID to check out a hostel on New York City’s Upper West Side, as well as several surveillance videos, including one in which suspect shoots Thompson.
Investigators believe the shooter may have traveled to New York City from Atlanta last month by bus, three law enforcement officials familiar with the matter told NBC News.
Investigators have not yet identified a suspect, although the investigation is ongoing, a law enforcement official briefed on the matter said Friday. Police have obtained dozens of images from the suspect’s surveillance cameras from tracking his time in Manhattan, the official said.
The police have offered a reward of up to 10,000 dollars for anyone who has information leading to the arrest and conviction of a crime.
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com