(AP Photo/Sam Craft)
In its coverage of a fatal January shooting that involved members of Alabama’s Crimson Tide college basketball team, The New York Times misidentified freshman player Kai Spears as a passenger in one of the cars at the scene. Months after the March article, the Times is now issuing a correction after Spears made good on his threat to sue for defamation:
Immediately following the article, which was published on March 15, the father of Spears and Alabama’s athletic director Greg Byrne came forward to deny that the freshman was in the car being driven by Crimson Tide forward Brandon Miller. When no correction was issued, Spears sued the paper, which provided this lengthy correction to the original:
Editors’ Note, June 2, 2023The original version of this article, published March 15, misidentified the person who was in the car with Brandon Miller when the shooting occurred.Based on information from a person familiar with the case, the article erroneously identified that person as Kai Spears, a freshman basketball player. After the article was initially published, Alabama’s
athletic director and Spears’s father denied that Spears was present. The Times included those responses and reviewed its reporting, but did not conclude that any other change to the article was warranted at that time.On Wednesday, Spears filed a defamation suit against The Times that included new details about the incident. Based on that information, editors assigned further reporting, which determined that the other person at the scene was not Spears but Cooper Lee, a student manager for the team. The Times regrets the error in the initial report.This article has been revised to remove the erroneous information; the latest updates can be seen here.
The shooting resulted in the death of 23-year-old Jamea Harris, who was in one of the cars present at The Strip, and the arrest of Darius Miles, who was kicked off the Alabama team following the incident and later indicted. According to the article, Miles had texted Miller about his gun being in Miller’s car, where police noted another passenger who remains unidentified in the body of the article.