NEW YORK (AP) — It took police more than a week to publicly identify Debrina Kawam, 57, as the woman who was fatally set on fire in a New York subway train last month. But on the internet, it took just hours for a false name to begin spreading.
In posts that circulated widely on social media after Kawam's death on Dec. 22, users claimed without evidence that the victim was a 29-year-old named “Amelia Carter.” These posts ricocheted across platforms, often accompanied by an image of a young woman that experts say may have been generated by artificial intelligence.
It's not clear who first made up the claim or why. But many sharing it highlighted the immigration status of the man charged in Kawam’s death — federal immigration officials say he is a Guatemalan citizen who entered the U.S. illegally — while accusing the media of refusing to name the “beautiful young white woman.”
Nathan Walter, an associate professor at Northwestern University who studies misinformation, said the story was “manna from heaven” for anti-immigration narratives and that it became a “framing war” while the public sought information that was not yet available.
“It spreads quickly because it just fits so well,” he said of misinformation about the victim’s identity. “And when something fits so well, we typically just tend to nod along and we don’t really question it.”
Graphic footage of Kawam engulfed in flames spread widely online soon after the Dec. 22 attack, boosting curiosity about her identity. But while a suspect, Sebastian Zapeta, was arrested later that day, scant details were available about the victim in the following days as authorities worked to identify her through forensics and video surveillance.
Instead, users filled the void with false claims about “Amelia Carter.” Posts called for officials and the media to “say her name." Some claimed she was on her way to visit her grandmother in Queens, despite the fact that the victim was set alight at the opposite end of the subway line in Brooklyn.
Some posts compared it to the February 2024 killing of Georgia nursing student Laken Riley by a Venezuelan man in the country illegally, which became a political rallying point for Republicans during the presidential race in support of increased border security.
As the falsehood spread, some began sharing a photo of a real Amelia Carter, who then had to post on X that she was “alive and well.”
But the initial image that was shared in many of these posts had signs" of being created by a generative adversarial network — a type of AI that can be used for creating images of fake people that are difficult to distinguish from the real thing — said Hany Farid, a digital forensics and misinformation expert at the University of California, Berkeley.
Farid pointed to the nondescript nature of the headshot and the alignment of the eyes as indications that the image may have been AI generated, though he acknowledged that its low quality made it difficult to analyze properly.
In an age when many have come to expect immediate answers, Michelle Ciulla Lipkin, executive director of the National Association for Media Literacy Education, noted that many people have lost patience for “that uncomfortable moment where we don’t have all the information.”
Bad actors often take advantage of this, she said, preying on the public’s desire to find out what’s going on and promote their own agendas.
Authorities finally revealed the victim of the subway burning on Tuesday, saying Kawam was from New Jersey and had briefly been in a New York homeless shelter after moving to the city recently.
Zapeta, whose address matches a shelter that provides housing and substance abuse support, has been indicted on murder and arson charges, according to prosecutors. He is yet to enter a plea, and his attorney has declined to comment.
