FALSE: GUNPOINT LIFT ROBBERY IN NEW YORK IN 2017, NOT NAIROBI MALL ‘RECENTLY’
Rodgers Odhiambo and Celine Abuga
FALSE: GUNPOINT LIFT ROBBERY IN NEW YORK IN 2017, NOT NAIROBI MALL ‘RECENTLY’
A video of three adults and a child being robbed at gunpoint moments after they enter a lift was shared on Facebook in Kenya on 1 September 2020, “BEWARE: This happened at Sarit Centre Nairobi,” the caption reads.
The Sarit Centre is a mall in the Westlands neighbourhood of Nairobi, Kenya’s capital.
In the video, just after the four walk into the lift two men stop it from closing, one standing between the lift doors and the other holding the outer hinged door open. The second man points a gun while the first grabs phones from the victims.
Africa Check used the InVID verification tool to extract frames from the video for a Google reverse image search. This revealed that the robbery actually took place at 2061 St Raymond Avenue in the US city of New York in 2017.
The video was published in an article in the New York Post on 25 August 2020.
The NYPD released shocking new video Tuesday of an unsolved gunpoint robbery from three years ago that depicts a pair of goons rip the watch off a man’s wrist as a frightened child looks on,” the article says.
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