The parents of two children killed at Sandy Hook elementary school in 2012 sued Alex Jones, the host of InfoWars, who had derided the shooting as fake and possibly staged by the government.
Leonard Pozner and Veronique De La Rosa, parents of Noah Pozner, filed a defamation lawsuit Tuesday against Jones, InfoWars LLC and Free Speech Systems LLC. Separately, Neil Heslin, sued Jones, InfoWars and Owen Shroyer, a reporter at InfoWars, also for defamation.
Last year, InfoWars accused De La Rosa of being an actor, rather than the parent of a child killed in the Connecticut mass shooting, according to the complaint. Also last year, Jones accused Heslin of lying about holding his son’s body and seeing a bullet hole in his head, according to his complaint.
"This heartless and vile act of defamation re-ignited the Sandy Hook ’false flag’ conspiracy and tore open the emotional wounds that plaintiff has tried so desperately to heal," Heslin said in the complaint.
Jones didn’t reply to a request for comment sent through his website.
Jones has been hit with numerous lawsuits related to his work at InfoWars -- a conspiracy website and radio show whose host has also claimed the Apollo 11 moon-landing was faked and that Doppler radar towers are used to control the weather.
Jones settled with Chobani last year after having accused the company of “importing migrant rapists.” After the yogurt company sued, a tweet and video related to the accusation were removed. “I regret that we mischaracterized Chobani, its employees and the people of Twin Falls, Idaho, the way we did,” Jones said.
An apology won’t be good enough for the Sandy Hook parents, said Bill Ogden, a partner at Kaster Lynch Farar & Ball LLP, who represents the parents in both lawsuits. He said his clients didn’t sue just to get money in a settlement.
The lawsuit “has to do with an organization that counts themselves as journalists identifying specific people and making false claims against them,” Ogden said.
In one instance, Jones posted a video titled “Sandy Hook Vampires Exposed.”