Student Googles Himself, Finds He's Accused of Murder

University of Florida student Zachary Garcia was more than a little surprised to find out he was wanted for murder after Googling his name. It turns out the police were looking for a different man but had mistakenly used Garcia's photo. From the article: "Investigators originally released a driver's license photo of Zachary Garcia — spelled with an 'A' — but it was Zachery Garcia — spelled with an 'E'— who was charged in connection with the crime."

Comments

Re:That's nothing!

[panda]

You laugh, but a man, with the same first and last name as I, was murdered in Jamaica several years ago in a rather brutal fashion: he was decapitated with a machete. He was leading a ring of phone scammers and some of the other members of the ring had a disagreement over the money.

Another man with the same first and last name is serving a prison sentence for weapons charges.

Another man with the same first and last name is a doctor.

Another is a low-budget file directory.

I could go on.

Its fun having a common name.

No, I didn't google myself as a result of this story. I do from time to time when bored with nothing else to do. If you google my name now, you don't get the murder story until very far into the results, but it was among the top results when it happened four or five years ago.

There's a movie for this...

[zuki]

Inbefore the obligatory quote from Terry Gilliam's prophetic movie masterpiece Brazil with the mistake between 'Buttle' and 'Tuttle', and the ensuing pandemonium.

Could be worst

[TheCarp]

This is a funny mistake but... you know... at least it was the civilian police, and civilian courts.

He should be glad his last name isn't El Masri: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khalid_El-Masri:

a German citizen who was kidnapped,[3] flown to Afghanistan, interrogated and allegedly tortured by the CIA for several months as a part of the War on Terror. Afterwards he was released. This extrajudicial detention was apparently due to a misunderstanding that arose concerning the similarity of the spelling of El-Masri's name with the spelling of suspected terrorist al-Masri[4] (the names are spelled the same way when using Arabic script).

On a related note, a friend of mine recently found he had a warrant for issues that are besides the point. Lets just say, dubious charges of a domestic nature. So, upon finding this out, and verifying it, he drove to a friends place to "lay low" while he calls his lawyer and figures what to do next. The advice he got? Interestingly.... go to the court house in the AM and surrender directly to the court. In this case, that meant he a) looked responsible to the judge b) got it over with quickly and c) denied the police (who had only heard the other side of the story) no chance to "recommend bail".

In the end, he walked out on his on recognizance. (well, end of the day, if not the story)

-Steve