Police in Louisville, Kentucky, have arrested a man for shooting three men dead in a bar. The killer apparently struck without motive, and some commentators have accused the press of burying the story.
Michael E. Rhynes Jr, 33, was arrested just after midnight on Saturday and charged with three counts of murder, after he allegedly walked into Bungalow Joe’s Bar and Grill, pulled a handgun, and shot three men dead at point-blank range.
“Nobody had ever seen this guy before,” bar owner Joe Bishop told WRDB News. “It was a totally random act. I didn’t think I’d be scrubbing blood off my patio on a Saturday morning.”
The slaying did not appear to be racially motivated. Rhynes Jr is black, and he killed two white men and a black man. Yet as rumors circulated that Rhynes Jr was wearing a ‘Justice for Breonna Taylor’ t-shirt, some commenters online accused the national media of ignoring the story for ideological reasons.
Black Lives Matter Activist Wearing ‘Justice for Breonna Taylor’ Shirt Walked into a Louisville Bar & Murdered Three People: The suspect was smiling from ear to ear as he was arrested for the shooting at Bungalow Joe’s Bar and Grill. ? #Murder#Terrorismhttps://t.co/Mo3AldykkF
chances of this becoming as much of a national story as ‘Catholic boy smiles’?
Can’t wait to see this reported in legacy media. pic.twitter.com/82G5S2e24H
According to journalist Cassandra Fairbanks, the suspect made several social media posts supporting the ‘Black Lives Matter’ cause.
Little is known about the case so far, and Rhynes Jr’s political beliefs remain the stuff of online speculation. However, the national media has been accused of turning a blind eye to black-on-white killings before, most recently when five-year-old Cannon Hinnant was brutally executed by his neighbor, a black man, in North Carolina in August. Hinnant’s killing was the talk of Twitter for more than a week before it was picked up by national news networks.
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