Nashville shooting sparks false image of killer's bedroom

A photo of a cluttered room decorated with LGBTQ and other flags has spread online alongside claims that it was home to the shooter who killed six people at the Covenant School in Nashville, Tennessee. This is false; the picture was posted in December 2021 by a Twitter user who shared "before and after" shots of a bedroom cleaning effort, reverse image searches prove.

"Shooter had NAFO, trans, and socialist flags. Targeted Christian school. Hmmmmm," says a March 27, 2023 tweet, one of several posts that shared the image across Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.

The photo shows a messy bedroom, including flags for LGBTQ pride, the Democratic Socialists of America and NATO, the Western political and military alliance formally known as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

The posts followed an attack at the private school on March 27, 2023 by a heavily armed former student who killed three children and three staff members before themselves being shot dead by police. Officers later named the suspect as 28-year-old Audrey Hale, who they said identified as transgender.

The revelation sparked waves of anti-LBGTQ activity on social media.

In fact, the picture sporting the rainbow pride and other flags is not related to the Nashville shooting; it predates the attack by more than a year.

Photo from 2021

A Google reverse image search found the same photo posted to Reddit on December 12, 2021.

"Whose room is this?" the Reddit user wrote above the photo.

The photo can also be seen in a December 16, 2021 post by a Twitter user named @RedCharlotte_, who shared it alongside another picture showing the room in a less cluttered state as daylight shines through a window.

"Before and after. I still need to clean out my closet so i can actually organize the mostly folded pile of clothes but I'm mostly done. I have to clean my desk next," the poster wrote, adding in a comment that they had received hateful messages because the room had been messy.

The user appears to have first posted the image on Twitter and subsequently deleted it days earlier, according to social media activity reviewed by AFP.

"These fascists need to chill," @RedCharlotte_ wrote in a December 11, 2021 post. "My 'dirty room' is literally almost all clothes. None of those bags are full of trash. Theyre wigs for cosplay."

On December 13, 2021, @RedCharlotte_ replied to another person who asked why the original photo was taken down. "I cleaned it," they wrote. "The original post i deleted literally said i was cleaning it."

On December 14, 2021, they responded to another tweet that shared the picture by writing, "This is my room btw."

The user had previously posted other photos that appeared to show the same bedroom from different angles.

AFP reached out to the @RedCharlotte_ account via a Twitter direct message, but no response was forthcoming.

Originated on 4chan

The claims falsely connecting the photo to the Nashville shooter appear to have started on the fringe message board 4chan, a haven for misinformation and the birthplace of the QAnon conspiracy theory. The image ricocheted across the message board before spilling on to other far-right platforms such as The Donald, and mainstream sites.

As the photo falsely claimed to show a bedroom belonging to Hale, the Nashville suspect, @RedCharlotte_ tweeted that they were "GETTING SAM HYDED." Hyde, a comedian, has been routinely blamed for mass shootings and other atrocities -- including the Nashville attack -- as part of a long-running internet hoax that originated on 4chan.

"I LITERALLY CLEANED MY ROOM," @RedCharlotte_ said in the March 28 Twitter thread.