Is it true that in 2011, Harris knocked down a teenager and disappeared from the scene of the accident?

In early September 2024, the Internet dispersed that the US presidential candidate was the culprit of an accident in which a 13-year-old girl seriously injured. We decided to verify the veracity of such publications.

The fact that Kamala Harris, being the Prosecutor General of California, shot down a pedestrian in San Francisco in 2011, and then left the scene of the incident, told Media, Information And Entertaining Portals, as well as many popular Telegram channels: ""Putin in Telegram"(178,000 views at the time of writing this analysis),"Voblya • Kursk"(143,000),"Heaven is"(86 000),"What happened?"(81 000),"Mordor's voice"(80,000) and others. The news was also discussed by users of social networks ("VKontakte" X, Facebook). The publications report that as a result of the incident, a dark-skinned teenage girl was seriously injured and "remained chained to a wheelchair for the rest of her life." The posts are accompanied by an almost two-minute news story with the logo of the KBSF-TV channel, in which the girl sitting in a stroller tells the details of how more than ten years ago Harris knocked her down by car, and then simply left the scene of the accident without trying to help. At the end of the video, x -rays are demonstrated, and a sunsid voice notes that the victim has undergone 11 operations. Also in viral publications it is indicated that all 13 years that have passed since the accident, the girl was silent, since her mothers were threatened by the close Harris.

At the time of writing, the website of the KBSF-TV television channel is not available (however copy Its main page is available on Internet Archive). Apparently, it is on the KBSF-TV.com website that the news about Harris, who allegedly knocked down a teenager in San Francisco, in 2011, appeared For the first time on September 2, 2024. At least, “verified” could not find a single earlier mention of this information. 

The KBSF-TV.com website looks suspicious: there are no outputs, editorial offices, employees' names, links to social networks and other information that is usually present on the media pages. At the end of August on this site was Only one publication: “Welcome to WordPress. This is your first post. Edit or delete it, and then start writing. ” The domain name is kbsf-tv.com It was registered More recently, August 20. Nevertheless, to September 3 The news feed of the portal already totaled six pages, each of which had up to ten notes, and under some of them there were July dates. That is, it is assumed that the texts were published before the creation of the site. Although KBSF-TV, judging by the name, positions itself as a TV channel, in the vast majority of publications there are no videos or reports. The only video that “verified” was found on the site was dedicated to Harris, who allegedly shot down a teenager.

As for the content of this publication, it also raises many questions. As a title illustration for the article, the authors used a photo of a car with a broken windshield. Using a reverse search for the Google image, you can find that this is a picture from a place accidentsthat occurred in 2018 on the island of GUAM. This in itself may not talk about anything, since the use of archival thematic photos as an illustration in the absence of real personnel from the scene is a common practice in the media. However, a video with an allegedly affected girl telling her story is not trustworthy. So, in the video itself, it is represented as Alisia Brown, and in the text notes - as Alisha Brown. When she completes her story, two X -ray pictures appear in the frame, and a sunbeam talks about the injuries allegedly received by the girl and her treatment. One of these pictures is taken from scientific articlepublished in 2010 (that is, a year before the alleged accident), the other from Articles 2017. 

LEAD Stories project Checked A video sequence and a sound path using Deepfake-O-Meter and Resemble Ai, which help to recognize content generated by neuralities. The use of both services showed that the video with a high degree of probability was created using artificial intelligence. At the same time, experts, Refined The factory project Politifact cannot confirm such conclusions. Sivei Liu, professor of computer sciences and engineering at the University of Buffalo, notes that there are no artifacts in the video, Typical For rollers generated by artificial intelligence. “I think that, most likely, this is an old kind (and not particularly well -made or convincing) cheap fake, just a staging interview,” agrees the professor of the University of California in Berkeley Hani Farid, specializing in checking digital misinformation.

Lead Stories and Politifact also turned to the San Francisco police, where an accident allegedly occurred. The department answered them that they did not have data on an accident that occurred in 2011 in the indicated place. The factor also did not find in the California press of that time notes about the accident described in the video.

Thus, there is no evidence that Harris in 2011 in San Francisco shot down pedestrians, one of which received serious injuries and was chained to a wheelchair. The source of the information is an anonymous site that mimifies under the California media and which was created just two weeks before the publication of this “sensation”. A video interview with the victim may have been generated by a neural network, and all other illustrations used in the article and video are images that are in the public domain and precisely not related to the alleged accidents.

The distribution scheme of this fake, implemented by its creators, is not used for the first time. For example, in early August Prochremile media told The fact that the German Foreign Minister Annalena Berobok allegedly used escort services during working visits to Africa countries. The proof was then a video with the participation of the alleged gigolo posted on the website of a fake German publication. A month earlier viral I became The story of the first lady of Ukraine Elena Zelenskaya, who allegedly bought an expensive car in France. This was reported on the basis of the publication of a francoid site, mimicing under the journalistic investigative project, and the video posted there, in which the man, represented by the seller in the car dealership participated.

Photo on the cover: x @Kamalaharris

Fake

What do our verdicts mean?

Read on the topic:

1. Lead Stories. Fact Check: Kamala Harris Not in Hit-And-Run Accident in 2011-'KBSF' News Station DOES NOT Exist, Image of Crash Is From 2018
2. The Bell. How to distinguish the site of a fake media from the present
3. Did Kamala Harris say that when the population is reduced, more children “can breathe clean air and drink clean water”?
4. “The most liberal senator” and “Woman in a blue suit”. Analysis of five allegations about Kamal Harris
5. Is it true that the Kamaly Harris team with the help of neural networks created photos and videos with crowds of supporters?