Parents of two children who were killed in a shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School have filed lawsuits against right-wing radio host Alex Jones.
Jones is being sued for defamation over his controversial claims that the shooting was a "giant hoax." On his radio show, Jones has repeatedly said that the 2012 shooting that killed 26 people — including 20 first-graders — never happened. Jones has instead spread the conspiracy theory that the event was staged by the government in an attempt to weaken Second Amendment rights.
Leonard Pozner and Veronique De La Rosa filed a lawsuit Tuesday against Jones and his website, Infowars. Their son, Noah Pozner, was 6 years old when he was killed in the Connecticut shooting. Jones has accused De La Rosa of working as a "crisis actor" by participating in an interview with CNN after the massacre.
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Separately, Neil Heslin filed a lawsuit over Jones' claims that he was lying when he described his experience holding his dead son, Jesse Heslin, who was also 6 when he died at Sandy Hook. Heslin is suing Jones, Infowars, and Owen Shroyer, an Infowars reporter who Heslin says made "heartless and vile" claims about his son's death. Heslin said he held his son "with a bullet hole through his head," which Shroyer and Jones later claimed was "not possible," The New York Times reports.
Both lawsuits were filed in a district court in Austin, Texas, the Hartford Courant reports, because that's where Jones operates his media company.
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