I don’t buy the conspiracy theories and “the Man sees everything and needed a plausible excuse” theories (although I’ll admit the Man does see a lot more than he should…)

But I will say this: I find it extremely odd that a random McD employee in Fucktown, Nowhere, 275 miles from NYC, recognized a hooded dude wanted for murder in NYC, for the following reasons:

• McD employees don’t look at patrons. They’re bored shitless and they’re not paid well enough to care. You could show up at any McD joint disguised as Elton John with a feather up your ass and the employee behind the counter would still tell you “Would you like fries with that” while looking right through you.

• Do you follow the local news in a city 275 miles from where you live? I don’t. And even assuming it’s NYC and it’s a big enough city that people in Altoona pay attention, there’s a murder every 12 hours in NYC. Why would that one in particular enter the consciousness of a bored employee in a burger joint in Altoona.

• Can you recognize a hooded guy you saw on a still photograph? I can’t. I might have suspicions, but I’m almost certain I wouldn’t be positive enough to call the cops. And again, I work at McD and all I really want is go home after my shift. So I might just forget I saw someone I might have vaguely recognized.

I personally don’t think he did it. He could easily be a grifter trying to take credit for a very popular act. There’s no shortage of those. All you’d need to do:

• Walk into a public place with a bag of somewhat incriminating items, but nothing that’s linked to the actual crime scene.
• Arouse enough suspicion to get the cops called on you. Being a white guy with black hair and a hoodie is not enough for someone to call the cops on you, I have no idea why people believe that was enough for a McD’s employee to call the cops.
• Claim credit for the shooting to the cops.
• Bonus points - Have a social media history praising similar actions.

The altoona cops then forwarded this to the NYPD, who were desperate to pin this on someone, after they messed up and let the shooter slip through their fingers. Out of the all the tips, this was the best one they’d gotten so far, so they’re running with it now.

This also explains why Luigi’s taking credit for some, but not all of the claims the police made (especially about the money he was supposedly carrying).

Yep. The cops & feds regularly use illegal means to gather evidence. Then they make up a story about how they could have hypothetically gathered it legally.

It’s called “parallel construction,” and it needs to be explicitly outlawed.

And that the police took the report seriously, to dedicate enough resources and shoot no one. They suspected he’d have a weapon, and no bullets flew from a group known for weak trigger discipline.

How many shitty fake reports from the poor sighted and easily convinced did they need to sift through to jump up for this one.

This is someone who fell off the entire grid for three months??

Its very easy to hide when nobody is looking for you.