US: Alex Jones ordered to make payout of almost $1bn to Sandy Hook families
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Damages of almost $1 billion have been awarded to the families of the victims of the Sandy Hook school massacre against Alex Jones, who claimed the tragedy was a hoax.
Six staff and 20 children were murdered at a primary school in Newtown, Connecticut, in 2012 by Adam Lanza, 20, who killed himself as police arrived on the scene. The children he killed were six and seven years old.
A jury made the $965m award to eight families and an FBI agent assigned to the case following a three-week defamation trial.
Lawyers told of how Mr Jones, 48, pushed lies on his InfoWars site. “Every single one of these families [was] drowning in grief and Alex Jones put his foot right on top of them,” Chris Mattei, for the families, had said.
The daughter of the murdered principal of the school said she had received rape threats. One man said that people had urinated on the grave of his seven-year-old son, Daniel, and had threatened to dig up his coffin.
Mr Jones was ordered to pay the parents of one child $49.3m by a jury in Texas in August. He faces a third defamation trial in Texas this year.
His companies InfoWars and Free Speech Systems have filed for bankruptcy.
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