Brittany Herring (Covington) Crying Mugshot: It’s the Wrong Person

That crying mugshot so many people are sharing on social media in outrage over the Chicago torture/kidnap video? See above.

It’s not one of the suspects. The woman in it isn’t even from Chicago.

The graphic Facebook Live video has understandably horrified people all over the world, going viral. But it’s also an Internet cautionary tale because so many people are misidentifying another person as the suspect and subjecting her to vitriolic commentary besides. Herring (Covington), her sister, and two other teenagers were charged with hate crimes and other serious offenses January 5.

This is the real Brittany Herring below (who sometimes goes by Brittany Covington):

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Brittany Herring. (Facebook)

You can see the actual mugshots of Covington and the three others charged in the case below:

tanishia covington, brittany covington, tesfaye cooper, jordan hill

Clockwise from top left: Brittany Covington, Tanishia Covington, Tesfaye Cooper and Jordan Hill. (Chicago Police)

Brittany Herring (Covington) is the teenager who streamed the primary Facebook live video on her page that shows a group of black teenagers attacking and harassing a white special needs man. Herring laughs during the video as other suspects say such things as “F-ck Donald Trump. F-ck white people, boy.” He is seen being kicked and punched.

They cut off pieces of the victim’s hair and order him to stand up, while the woman streaming the video calls him a “b-tch as- white thug.” At one point, she says that her little sister “said it’s not funny,” but she added, “This sh-t is hilarious.” In a second video, the suspects force the victim to drink from a toilet and to say “f-ck Donald Trump.” Four suspects are now under arrest, although they have not yet been identified by police, who are investigating hate crime charges.

The videos are obviously horrific. However, the crying mugshot is actually a different person named Brittany Shalynn Davis.

Here’s the proof it’s not Herring: A 2015 news article on ABC13 that contains the crying mugshot and says it’s Davis.

That story says that Davis, of Houston, Texas, was charged with aggravated robbery with a deadly weapon. She was accused of luring a man using the popular online dating site “Plenty o’ Fish.” After they met, said the television station, she “stepped away” and the victim alleged two men tried to rob him and then shot him. Here is another old story on KPRC-TV in Houston that also says the mugshot is Davis.

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Brittany Herring. (Facebook)

The only thing she shares with Herring? The first name Brittany, and, at the time of the arrest in 2015, Davis was also 18.

Pretty horrible story, but it has absolutely nothing to do with the horrors in Chicago. We’ve seen this sort of social media false identification before in tragedies of national interest, such as when web sleuths falsely identified people in photos as being the Boston Marathon bomber.

In another example of Internet error, people are criticizing the system for releasing Herring on bail – but that was for an earlier case in October, not this one.

The Davis photo ricocheted all over social media. It was hard not to come across it. A couple examples:

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On Facebook, if you search the term Brittany Herring, many people are posting the crying mugshot with extremely incendiary remarks. Some are also demanding that Herring receive life in prison – or worse.

You can watch the Chicago videos here. Warning: They are very graphic:


Read more about Brittany Herring and the video in Spanish at AhoraMismo.com: