Standing Rock: Thousands of Wild Buffalo Appear Out of Nowhere
Claim: An 11-year-old girl was shot and killed by a police sniper at the Standing Rock pipeline protest site but the media covered up news of it.
Example: [Collected via e-mail, October 2016]
I saw a video on YouTube in which a man was reporting from Standing Rock. He said that an eleven year old girl was shot and killed by a sniper on October 28. I want to know if this is true.
Origin:In late October 2016, a video titled "Police snipers shoot 11-year-old at Dakota Pipeline protests" was shared to YouTube and circulated on Facebook.
The since-deleted video purportedly consisted of an individual providing an account (but not any actual footage) of the supposed shooting of an 11-year-girl by a police sniper at Standing Rock, the site of an ongoing protest over construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline.
The clip (originally hosted at the URL https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JI_9p5-pEFg) has since been deleted, and we were unable to locate any copies of it. However, the rumor about the young girl purportedly shot and killed at Standing Rock by a police sniper lives on in social media posts.
No news account reported any such shooting, and a concerned public unable to locate the original video asked protest leaders whether the rumor was accurate of anyone involved, those demonstrators would be the likeliest candidates to confirm violent activity at the site of the Dakota Access Pipeline protests. As the rumor circulated, protester Dallas Goldtooth described the claim as "misinformation":
The widely followed Facebook page Indigenous Life Movement also refuted the rumor:
Both Facebook pages denied anyone (much less a child) had been killed at the Standing Rock protest site on or around 29 October 2016 and urged anyone interested in the demonstrations to follow official tribal feeds in order to prevent misinformation from spreading.
Originally published: 31 October 2016
Source: http://www.snopes.com/girl-shot-at-standing-rock/
