Washington Navy Shooter: Hunt Continues For Gunmen

Impact

An innocent man was initially misidentified as a guman involved in Monday's Navy Yard shooting by two major networks before he was found to be wrongly accused, eerily reminiscent of the misidentifications that took place in the aftermath of the Boston Bombings.

Rollie Chance, a Navy lieutenant, was falsely identified as a Navy Yard shooter by NBC’s Chuck Todd who Tweeted the name before deleting it, as well as by a report made by CBS. 

CBS corrected the error by issuing this statement, "Earlier, CBS News reported the ID of the shooter, based on an ID card found at the scene of the shootings, that person is not a suspect."

Tood attempted to clarify the error by tweeting, "The confusion over the shooter name had to do with an I.D. card found near dead gunman; What led to bad initial reporting."

Twitter has served as a primary source of reporting during Monday's ordeal, largely housed under the hashtag #navyyardshooting.

The popular online community Reddit has banned a section of the site, or subreddit, previously crafted to attempt to help identify the suspects. Reddit became a gathering place crowd-sourced sleuthing in the aftermath of the Boston Marathon bombing, mistakenly idnetifying Sunil Tripathi, a 22-year-old Brown University student who had gone missing the previous month, was one of the bombers. Tripathi's body was later discovered near Providence, R.I. Reddit later apologized for its role in enabling the post

While media outlets continue to work to identify the up to three shooter(s) who may be involved in Monday's attack, no names have been confirmed at this point. Two possible shooters are still reported at large, according to police chief Cathy Lanier. One, a white male between 40 and 50 years of age wearing a tan military-style uniform and a beret style hat, and the other a black male between 40 and 50 in an olive military-style uniform, approximately 5'10 with greying sideburns. Area residents are being asked to remain inside, and a number of area schools remain on lockdown.

Check back here for updates.