Someone posted what they claimed to
be George Zimmerman’s address on Twitter. This was retweeted by lots of people,
one of whom was Spike Lee. His 240,000 Twitter followers all saw this address
show up in their timeline of tweets. The problem is it was the wrong address.
The people who really live at that
address are actually a husband and wife in their 70s. Ever since the erroneous
posting, they have been receiving threats, and they say they are living in
fear. In fact, they have had to move into a hotel in order to avoid potential
visits by angry neighbors and to stay out of the public eye. The wife has
health problems and all this stress is not good for her heart.
The mistaken tweet came about because
there used to be a George Zimmerman who lived at that address. That was George W.
Zimmerman, though, and not George Michael Zimmerman who shot and killed Trayvon
Martin. However, even if he had the address right, the original poster was so
irresponsible in tweeting this information to as many famous people as he could
think of, including LeBron James, 50 Cent and Will Smith. Fortunately, Spike
Lee was the only celebrity who retweeted the erroneous address.
It is sobering, and somewhat terrifying,
to see how easily Twitter can be used to spread information and to possibly
incite others to violence. This situation is bad enough as it is, but it easily
could have turned tragic with an innocent elderly couple caught in the middle.
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