(I'm looking at you, Google and YouTube-not to mention Facebook, which hosted the live stream to begin with.) And you don't even need to be on 8chan to stumble on the footage: Search engines' predictive search will actively encourage you to browse for it when you type a related term. 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. Officials say an imam shot outside his mosque in Newark on Wednesday morning has died from his injuries.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 shooting was reported at Masjid Muhammad-Newark at South Orange Avenue and Camden Street around 6:15 a.m. The victim, identified as Imam Hassan Sharif, was transported to University Hospital in critical condition. He was pronounced dead later Wednesday afternoon, according to officials. When police arrived to the scene, they found Sharif lying in the parking lot with multiple gunshot wounds, 10 feet from the mosque entrance. He had bullet wounds in his abdomen and left arm. Officials say they don't yet know what the motive of the shooting was, if there was one, but they say it does not appear to be an act motivated by bias or domestic terrorism. "The impact on the community of this sort of particularly dastardly crime cannot be understated," said Acting Essex County Prosecutor Theodore Stephens. People in the area say they believe this shooting had nothing to do with the crisis in the Middle East or ethnic or religious bias. Instead, they blame the ongoing crisis of violence in the neighborhood. "The crime in this area just has to stop," said Newark resident Paulette Williams. I can't take anymore." Daud Haqq, the president of the Tri-State Imams Council, is especially shaken by his friend's death. "My heart is really hurting over him," said Haqq, before questioning the motive, "You're not afraid to attack an imam, how about the average Muslim?" Investigators are now going through security and city-owned street cameras to determine whether they could spot an assailant. Bullet casings have also been retrieved are being analyzed. Acting Essex County Prosecutor Theodore Stephens vowed to get some answers for the reeling community.
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