Father Sandy Hook says Alex Jones lied led strangers to demand to see his dead son

  • David Wheeler, the father of one of Sandy Hook’s victims, testified in Alex Jones’ libel trial on Wednesday.
  • Jones has already been found responsible for the defamation; The trial revolves around how much he owes in compensation.
  • Wheeler said Jones’s “false” talk prompted people to come to his house asking for his son, who was killed in the shooting.

David Wheeler, the father of one of Sandy Hook’s victims, testified Wednesday that harassment stemmed from Alex Jones’ conspiracy theory that the mass school shooting was a “hoax” that prompted strangers to show up at his home demanding to see his dead son.

Wheeler said, “Someone came into the house and knocked on the door. The person demanded to see Ben saying ‘I know he’s here, I know he’s alive.'”

Wheeler said one of his friends was the first to tell him that Jones was spreading a lie that the shooting was in stages.

“After the shock of Ben’s murder, I felt like I was underwater and didn’t know which way he came up. You understand that, and you’re trying to get your head around. To have someone openly tell the world they didn’t. It didn’t happen and that you’re a fraud and a fake is incredibly confusing. Believe… I couldn’t figure it out,” he said.

“I felt like I somehow lost my legitimacy. It makes you feel unimportant. Like what you’ve been through it doesn’t matter.”

Jones is currently on trial in Connecticut after being found guilty of defaming the families of the victims who died in the Sandy Hook shooting, claiming it was a government plot. The trial aims to determine the amount of damages he owes to the victims.

The trial is expected to take four to six weeks and involve 15 plaintiffs – most of whom are the victims’ parents.

Twenty first graders and six adults were killed in the shooting on December 14, 2012.

Wheeler was the first witness called to the stand on Wednesday during the second week of the trial. Talk about the havoc Jones wreaked on his life.

In the aftermath of the December 2012 shooting, Wheeler said people harassed him on Facebook, calling him a “fake” and a “liar,” and that clips from his failed acting career were used as evidence of his appointment to play a role in the launch.

He said that strangers who came to his house eventually forced him to install a security camera system.

Wheeler also had to have several conversations with his surviving son, Nate, who was 9 when they lost Ben, he said.

“For years he’s been asking me why anyone would do such a thing…why Alex Jones would say these things,” Wheeler said.

At one point, Wheeler became emotional on the stage as he was asked to describe what Ben was up to.

“Every parent thinks their son is the greatest, but he had a great sense of humor. He was a really funny kid. He moved so fast all over the world, and nothing moved fast enough for him.”

He remembers one night when Ben was acting at the dinner table, and as he took him aside to have a conversation, Ben bit him on the arm. When he asked his son why he did it, he said Ben replied, “But dad, I had to bite something.”

Wheeler said he is now grateful to Ben for leaving a scar that physically reminds him of his late son.

This is the second of three similar experiments. The first hearing concluded in August, as a jury in Austin ordered Jones to pay $50 million in damages to the parents of 6-year-old Sandy Hook victim. A third trial in Texas is pending by Leonard Posner and Veronique de la Rosa, parents of victim Noah Posner.

Jones skipped the first week of his trial in Connecticut but made it to town for the second week. On Tuesday, he appeared in court but was not called to testify. Abroad, he made a statement to the media, calling Judge Barbara Bellis a “tyrant” and saying he didn’t think he had done anything wrong.

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