Sandy Hook Father Tells Court After Alex Jones’s Hoax Comments His Murdered Son’s Grave Was Desecrated
Screenshot via Law and Crime
The parents of a seven-year-old child murdered in the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012 testified during the Connecticut defamation trial of conspiracy theorist Alex Jones on Tuesday.
Jones already lost the trial in a default judgment and parents are now seeking damages over the harassment and threats they faced after the InfoWars host told his audience the shooting was a hoax and that the victims were crisis actors.
Mark Barden, whose son Daniel was killed at Sandy Hook, took the stand and detailed the letters he received from Jones’s followers, some of whom claimed they were vandalizing his son’s grave.
“To hear people were desecrating it and urinating on it and threatening to dig it up, I don’t know how to articulate to you what that feels like, but that’s where we are,” Barden told the court Tuesday, reported the Huffington Post’s Sebastian Murdock.
A fire alarm went of while Barden testified and the courtroom was evacuated. Judge Barbara Bellis later told the courtroom that a fire alarm was pulled in an adjacent parking garage.
#BREAKING: The Alex Jones trial. The fire alarm started going off right in the middle of afternoon testimony. Waterbury Superior Court has been evacuated. @FOX61News pic.twitter.com/krUXDXrVZo
— Matt Caron (@MattCaronTV) October 4, 2022
Barden spoke of his son while on the stand and described his “compassion” and “empathy.”
“He had a deep, very involved sense of compassion. It was a beautiful thing to watch. His teachers would tell us Daniel was always the first one to help other students. He had this beautiful sense of empathy and concern and care for others,” Barden told the court.
He also explained the toll the threats and harassment since his son’s death and Jones’s subsequent claims it was all hoax have taken on his life.
“It interferes with your sleep, with your ability to process. I’d go grocery shopping and spend the entire time looking at the faces of people in the room instead of focusing on grocery shopping with Jackie,” he added, referencing his wife Jackie Barden who also testified Tuesday.
Parents offered similar sentiments during Jones’s defamation trial in Austin, Texas over the summer. One father told the court that Jones had made his life “living Hell.”
Jones was ordered to pay over $45 million in that trial to Sandy Hook parents. Depsite the trials and Jones’s public apologies for the damage he has done, Jones remains a popular figure in conservative circles and recently received a standing ovation at a Turning Point USA event.
