Old image from Spain shared as Italian boy commits suicide after family dies due to coronavirus - Alt News
Kinjal
31st March 2020 / 3:48 pm
A picture of a man jumping off a building has gone viral. According to social media users, a young boy in Italy committed suicide after all his family members died due to coronavirus.
A Facebook user Saeed Siddiqui posted the viral image. It has been liked over 1,100 times.
This picture is viral on Twitter and Facebook with the Hindi text, “News from Italy made the whole world cry. After a young boy’s whole family died due to coronavirus the boy jumped off a building and committed suicide (translated from इटली की ये खबर पूरी दुनिया को रुला गई करोना से पूरे परिवार को खोने के बाद युवक ने बिल्डिंग के छत से कूदकर आत्महत्या कर लिया।)”
Alt News has received several requests to fact-check the images on WhatsApp (+91 76000 11160) and on our official Android application.
Alt News performed a reverse image search on Google and found that the viral image was published by Maldito Feminismo, a Spain-based fact-checking platform on December 31, 2019. According to the report, the police informed that a woman committed suicide by jumping from the roof of Hotel Valencia Center on December 24, 2019. The first case of COVID-19 was confirmed in Spain on January 31, 2020. The report states that the claims related to coronavirus are baseless.
❌No, la persona que se suicida desde la azotea de un hotel no es “otro afectado más por la ley de violencia de género, esta vez en Valencia”: era una mujer según Policía Nacional.https://t.co/CWwT4bMuxC
— MALDITO BULO (@malditobulo) December 30, 2019
The incident was also fact-checked by Spanish website Newtral. “The National Police of Valencia has confirmed to Newtral.es that the images of this event were recorded in 2019 and that they are not related to the coronavirus,” reads its article.
Thus, the social media claim associated with the viral video is false. Earlier, a 2015 video of a Ghanian woman jumping off a building was shared as a man committed suicide in the US after testing positive for coronavirus.
Kinjal Parmar holds a Bachelor of Science in Microbiology. However, her keen interest in journalism, drove her to pursue journalism from the Indian Institute of Mass Communication. At Alt News since 2019, she focuses on authentication of information which includes visual verification, media misreports, examining mis/disinformation across social media. She is the lead video producer at Alt News and manages social media accounts for the organization.
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