Tom & Curley: Mistaken identity story out of Edmonds has an added twist

KIRO Radio’s Tom Tangney and John Curley discussed the case of mistaken identity from a viral video out of Edmonds that led to death threats, but there’s another part of the story.

“So there’s a guy who’s at a bar and he videotapes a customer confronting him. According to the man videotaping, this guy is accusing him of not paying for his drinks,” Curley explains. “I think those are basically the facts as told.”

“This man that has the video … I think he has some people who follow him. He basically says find out who this guy is,” he continued. “… So then the doxing process begins, and then at that point it becomes a hunt to find the man. The people that do this sort of thing, they thought they found the guy.”

The man was identified as a guy named Dean. People found his home improvement business on Yelp and gave him hundreds of one-star reviews, called him a racist, and he’s gotten death threats. But Dean isn’t the guy in the video.

Listen to Dean’s interview with the Dori Monson Show here.

“So at that point they got the wrong guy, but it doesn’t matter because in the Twitter world where no one needs to think, all you need to do is react,” Curley said.

For clarification, there are three characters here: the unidentified man in the restaurant, the man with the video camera named Karlos Dillard, and the misidentified man named Dean.

Curley then explains the twist to this story.

“Well, since the internet has all the answers. Mr. Dillard’s real last name is Gum. He is from Detroit,” Curley said. “He says that he was abandoned at the age of 15 and he worked for three jobs while homeless to survive throughout high school and college.”

“Where are you getting this information?,” Tom asked.

“I’m getting this from the internet, Tom, where everything is true,” Curley replied. “… You can find a bunch of postings from him because he has a tendency to find racism wherever he goes.”

“This is what he basically does. I don’t know if it’s for a living,” Curley added. “… This guy, from my analysis of the internet because the internet is always true, he is a professional slip and fall guy. So you claim racism and then you put it up on a post and then everybody follows you and then you become sort of this victim hero guy, and he’s looking for justice.”

Listen to the Tom and Curley Show weekday afternoons from 3 – 7 p.m. on KIRO Radio, 97.3 FM. Subscribe to the podcast here.

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