The death this week of an Infowars reporter in Austin has kicked off a slew of conspiracy theories about the killing itself. But the police said on Wednesday they believed that the reporter, Jamie White, was the victim of a random attack.
In a matter-of-fact update that did not address the conspiracy theories swirling in right-wing media, Austin police said that Mr. White, 36, was trying to thwart his vehicle from being stolen outside his apartment complex on Sunday night when someone shot him and fled. Mr. White later died at the hospital.
When asked about the conspiracy theories, Jason Jones, the Police Department’s lead homicide investigator on the case replied, “We will follow the leads that develop in this case.”
That has not stopped Infowars’ founder, Alex Jones, from doing what he has long done: spread misinformation. Nearly three years after a jury found him liable for almost $1 billion in damages for saying that the 2012 school shooting in Newtown, Conn., was a hoax, the right-wing provocateur took to the air with speculation about Mr. White’s death.
The killing “could’ve been a hit,” Mr. Jones said on Tuesday in a YouTube interview with the conservative commentator Benny Johnson. He added: “What are the chances in a town of over two million people that an Infowars lead reporter gets butchered?”
Mr. Jones also claimed that Mr. White and Elon Musk were both on a hit list that originated in Ukraine and has asked the Justice Department to get involved. Before his death, Mr. White himself posted on social media last June that he was on a “Ukrainian ‘Enemies List,’” and claimed that it was tied to the State Department, the U.S. Agency for International Development, the Central Intelligence Agency and the liberal financier George Soros.
“I think Pam Bondi should look into it,” Mr. Jones said, referring to the U.S. attorney general. “The Austin Police Department admitted they’re totally overwhelmed. They said they can’t really respond to most crime scenes.”
During a news briefing on Wednesday, Detective Jones, the homicide investigator, who has no relation to the Infowars founder, asked for the public’s assistance to find the culprits.
“Today, we are asking for anyone with information about Mr. White’s murder to call the Police Department,” he said.
Alex Jones broke news of the tragedy on Monday on air, and in a statement blamed Mr. White’s killing “in part” on the policies of Travis County’s district attorney, José Garza, a Democrat.
Mr. Garza was re-elected in November despite conservative criticism that he had been soft on crime. In a statement, the district attorney’s office called Mr. Jones’s allegations “shameful, but not surprising that Alex Jones is trying to exploit the victims’ death for political gain.”
The statement went on: “However, we will not let Jones distract us from our work in seeking justice for Mr. White and supporting the Austin Police Department in its investigation.”
According to Detective Jones, officers responded to a call of a shooting at around 11:56 p.m. Sunday at a parking lot outside the victim’s apartment complex in a southeast neighborhood of Austin.
A preliminary investigation revealed that Mr. White had tried to stop an unspecified number of people from breaking into his Kia and was shot, the police said. When officers arrived, they found Mr. White, “lying on the ground in the parking lot with apparent trauma to his body,” Detective Jones said.
The perpetrators fled the scene, the police said. Mr. White was taken to a nearby hospital where he succumbed to his injuries about half an hour later.
One of the car windows was broken, and the police found blood inside the vehicle. They said it very likely belonged to some of the perpetrators who appeared to have been cut by the glass.
The police believe Mr. White’s attackers have been targeting Kia vehicles across Austin.
“The suspects were in the process of breaking into multiple vehicles that night, including the vehicle of our victim,” a spokeswoman, Lisa Cortinas, said in an email.
Investigators said they recovered a stolen vehicle that was very likely taken by the same people.
“They have no regard for human life,” Detective Jones said of the perpetrators on Wednesday.
Homicide rates have been stubbornly high in Austin, the capital of Texas and one of the fastest-growing cities in America, in recent years. But at the news conference on Wednesday, Detective Jones said that murders were down 30 percent this year from the same period a year ago.
Alex Jones said his team became concerned when Mr. White didn’t report to work on time Monday morning. “We sent some people over this morning when he didn’t answer the phone, because he’s always here early and early,” he said on his own show.
Mr. White had written about a variety of subjects for Infowars, including reporting on Secret Service officers shooting an armed man near the White House, and on the cost-cutting efforts by Mr. Musk, who is leading the new Department of Government Efficiency.
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