California fires: Sheriff rips conservative media on 'crazy' arrest rumor

[DonViejo]

Source: USA Today




Amber Sandhu and Sean Longoria, Redding (Calif.) Record Searchlight Published 9:58 p.m. ET Oct. 17, 2017

Conservative media sites on Tuesday attempted to link the Sunday arrest of a Latino man on suspicion of arson in Sonoma to the massive, deadly cluster of wildfires burning in California’s wine country.

But Breitbart News and InfoWars offered no evidence to link the man’s arrest to the fires and their accounts of the man’s arrest were disputed the same day by Sonoma County Sheriff Rob Giordano.

“There’s a story out there he’s the arsonist for these fires. That is not the case. There is no indication he is related to these fires at all,” Giordano said in a news conference also broadcast on the department’s Facebook page and area TV stations. “I just did want to kill that speculation right now so we didn’t have things running too far out of control.”

Both sites published the story of the man, Jesus Fabian Gonzalez, who was arrested on Sunday on suspicion of arson in Sonoma, southeast of Santa Rosa. The websites cite a Santa Rosa Press Democrat report, though the paper doesn’t connect the arrest to the larger fires, which broke out Oct. 8 in Napa and Sonoma counties and have so far killed dozens and destroyed thousands of homes.



Read more: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2017/10/17/california-fires-sheriff-rips-conservative-media-crazy-arrest-rumor/774572001/

[underpants]

1. PG&E power lines

due to a lack of maintenance. That's what these fake stories are covering up.

[Johnyawl]

2. It's Breitbart and info wars...

...mostly they're peddling racist hate.

[Bayard]

5. Is there proof of that?

[underpants]

6. This

https://www.google.com/amp/www.mercurynews.com/2017/10/10/pge-power-lines-linked-to-wine-country-fires/amp/

[Bayard]

8. Wow.

Thanks for that. Had not heard. When I lived out there, PG&E drove me nuts wanting to come in and trim miniscule twigs. The main problem was that they would contract it out, and those people were clueless. I started insisting they had to send one of PG&E's arborist along.

[marybourg]

3. Conservative?

[IronLionZion]

4. Racist idiots think immigrants are sneaking in here to start forest fires?

[hvn_nbr_2]

7. After they rape and pillage, they want a BIG smoke.