No, an Australian national team basketball player has not been found shot dead in the Philippines

This article is more than one year old.
Published on July 5, 2018 at 11:00
2 min read

An online report claimed an Australian basketball player, who was involved in brawl at a World Cup qualifying game against the Philippines, was later found shot dead in a hotel in Manila. The player, Daniel Kickert, is alive and AFP has taken photos of him after he returned to Australia.

Kickert was among 13 players ejected after a fight on July 2 in Manila between the Gilas Pilipinas and the Boomers, which made international headlines.

Less than a day later, an online post reported that Kickert was discovered dead in Pasay, a city which is part of greater Manila.

In its initial image shared on Facebook that is made to look like a news report and copied below, the headline reads: “Aussie Player who started the fight with Gilas players found dead in a hotel room in Pasay”.

A photo montage in the post shows a real image of Kickert from the brawl.

It also includes a black-and-white photo of an apparent corpse, giving the impression this is Kickert.

Clicking on the photos leads to another headline that reads reads: “JUST IN: Australian Player who started fight against Gilas Players has died from a shooting inside a hotel in Pasay city”.

Photos taken by AFP photographers confirm Kickert did not die in Manila after the brawl.

The photo below shows him and his team preparing to fly out of Manila’s airport on July 3.

An AFP photographer also took the image below of him arriving at an Australian airport on July 4.

An analysis of the techniques used in the report provides further evidence it is false.

A reverse image search of the black-and-white image in the initial photo montage shows the corpse has appeared on the internet previously. This article from February links the photo to a man killed in a boating accident in the Philippines.

Clicking on the video that accompanies the post claiming Kickert died also leads viewers to a news clip that has nothing to do with him nor the brawl. Instead it is about a Filipino municipal engineer who was killed in 2016.

Previous false death reports in the Philippines recently have also linked to unrelated video.

A link to an unrelated video was similarly used in a false report claiming Philippine actor John Lloyd Cruz had died, which AFP debunked in this report.

The format for both reports on Cruz and Kickert are very similar. They both use the same font, while the style of falsely claiming a large number of views in the bottom right hand corner of the alleged videos is also similar.

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No, an Australian national team basketball player has not been found shot dead in the Philippines

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