You don't need to be an 8chan denizen to be tempted by firsthand footage of an event dominating the news cycle, just as most people probably wouldn't look away if they came by the scene of an attack-or even a particularly bad accident-in real life. A small minority of us might be scanning the footage in desperate hope to establish the whereabouts of our loved ones.īut plenty of people are today looking at the Christchurch video for no real good reason-just because the draw of the drama and the apparent safety of viewing it from miles away, behind a computer screen. Some of us, like journalists and police, are professionally obliged to view distressing imagery to try to discern valuable new information, whether for investigation purposes or to better inform debate. Dozens of copies of what appears to be footage from a helmet-mounted camera are circulating on the darker corners of the internet and are being persistently posted on more mainstream platforms such as YouTube, Twitter and Facebook, which don't always manage to catch the video before it goes up. The Twitter account of the same name was quickly suspended.Horrific videos like the one posted by the Christchurch mosque shooting suspect Brenton Tarrant are geared to appeal to the morbidly curious, and appeal it did.

The Facebook account that posted the video was no longer available shortly after the shooting. In a lengthy manifesto published online the supposed shooter outlined who he was and why he carried out the massacre at the Christchurch mosque, NZ Herald reported. Inside the mosque, the gunman's footage showed distinctively patterned green carpet that also matched images tagged on Google Maps as being at the same location.ĭistinctive writing on the gunman's weapons seen in the footage also matched images posted on a Twitter account using the same name and cartoon profile picture as the Facebook Live video. This included the entrance of the mosque, which has a number of distinct features such as a fence, postbox and doorway. The 17-minute video ended as the gunman drove away from the scene at speed.Īgence France-Presse confirmed the video was genuine through a digital investigation that included matching screenshots of the mosque taken from the gunman's footage with multiple images available online showing the same areas. He then re-entered the mosque to check for survivors.

Christchurch shooting video leak