A 33-year-old man suspected of killing a woman on Sunday in an arson attack aboard a stationary subway train in Brooklyn, New York, was arraigned in criminal court on Tuesday on murder and arson felony charges. Though law enforcement has not publicly identified the deceased female victim, social media users have falsely claimed she was a 29-year-old named “Amelia Carter.”
The New York Police Department’s Office of the Deputy Commissioner, Public Information, informed The Dispatch Fact Check that the deceased victim’s identity has yet to be made publicly available because it is “pending proper family notification.” Earlier this week, an anonymous law enforcement official told the New York Times that the deceased victim appeared to be homeless and was asleep on the train prior to her fatal assault.
A viral graphic memorializing a woman purportedly named “Amelia Carter” falsely identifies her as the victim in the New York subway arson attack. The graphic has made the rounds across Facebook, X, Instagram, and Threads. According to it, Carter was “burned alive while on subway by illegal alien” and will be “dearly missed by her parents entire family, friends and classmates in her Ph.D. class at Univ PA.”
But such claims are false.
The graphic is labeled as a product of The Remembrance Project, a group that documents and memorializes victims killed by illegal immigrants, but it is not clear whether the group had any role in the graphic’s creation. The Remembrance Project’s “Stolen Lives” memorial website honors dozens of victims in similarly formatted graphics, but one honoring a so-called Amelia Carter is not included among them. The Remembrance Project did not immediately return The Dispatch Fact Check’s request for comment to confirm whether it produced the graphic.
The memorial graphic also included an alleged image of the victim, but the person depicted in the photo is not the deceased victim. According to Hany Farid, a professor at the University of California-Berkeley’s School of Information and and expert in artificial intelligence imagery analysis, the image “does contain tell-tale signs” of being AI-generated. While Farid’s analysis could not conclusively determine whether the photo is AI-generated—because of the photo’s low-quality resolution—he did say the image’s authenticity is “suspicious.” Farid explained the image could be the product of a generative adversarial network (GAN) AI technology, which is capable of creating realistic, human-like faces of nonexistent people. “In particular, the tightly-cropped headshot, non-descript background, and alignment of the eyes are consistent with a GAN-generated face,” Farid told The Dispatch Fact Check.
While the actual victim of the arson attack was pronounced dead at the scene of the crime Sunday, December 22, the graphic says she was killed the following day, December 23. Furthermore, although a University of Pennsylvania website page lists an Amelia Carter as a “2023 cohort” graduate student at the school’s history and sociology of science department, there is no indication that she is the deceased victim. A photo of her on the university website does not appear to be the same person pictured in the viral memorial graphic.
On December 22, a cryptocurrency named “Justice For Amelia (AMELIA)” was created on the website “Pump.fun,” which allows users to easily create cryptocurrency coins while also providing a trading platform that allows internet users to buy and sell them. As of December 26, the cryptocurrency had a market cap totaling more than $8,000. The trading website page for the “AMELIA” cryptocurrency also includes a fake press release from the victim’s family.
New York City, NY – The family of 29-year-old Amelia Carter has announced her tragic passing after she was fatally set on fire aboard an F Train in Coney Island. In an emotional statement, her grieving family expressed their heartbreak and called for justice. “We are devastated and heartbroken beyond words. Amelia was a beautiful soul who brought light into the lives of everyone who knew her. She didn’t deserve this senseless, cruel act,” the family said. “We demand justice for Amelia. No one should ever have to endure such pain, and no family should have to experience this kind of loss.”
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