After June 29 shootings in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, killed two firefighters and injured another, social media users rushed to fill in the blanks of suspected shooter Wess Roley’s background.
Roley, 20, was found dead at the scene with a firearm nearby.
One X user attached screenshots of a response from Grok, X’s artificial intelligence chatbot, in a June 30 X post about Roley.
The Grok response included many claims, such as that Roley had a “prior arrest for assault in 2024,” for supposedly attacking a woman with a knife. Grok claimed Roley was charged with felony assault with a deadly weapon and that he pleaded guilty to misdemeanor assault.
The AI chatbot also claimed that Roley “was known to have made threats against his family, leading to a no-contact order being issued against him.”
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Other accounts reshared these claims, including one post that gained 1.8 million views.
But the claims are unsubstantiated. AI chatbots such as Grok are prone to responding to queries with hallucinations — results that may sound plausible but are not real — and misleading information. Local authorities said they found no criminal record for Roley, and PolitiFact found no news reports or court cases to support claims that he was charged with assault and had a no-contact order.
“We have run a national criminal history and there is no (record) for Roley,” Lt. Mark Ellis of the Kootenai County Sheriff’s Office, Idaho, told PolitiFact. “Sometimes when a juvenile commits a crime it may be sealed, but that is up to a judge and the responsible agency where the crime occurred.”
In a June 30 press briefingKootenai County Sheriff Robert Norris said Roley had lived in California, Arizona and Idaho, and his office found no criminal history for Roley. “We’ve had interactions with him,” Norris said, “but we don’t find a criminal record with him.”
Norris said Roley has had five “minor” interactions with the Kootenai County Sheriff’s Department and Couer d’Alene Police Department. They pertained to trespassing and welfare checks, he said.
News reports say Roley previously lived in Phoenix, Arizona. No Arizona public records show charges against Roley. Spokespersons for the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office and Maricopa Clerk of the Superior Court told PolitiFact they found no cases for Roley in their systems.
No proof of a ‘no-contact order’ from Roley’s family
The Grok response claimed that Roley’s family “reported his threatening behavior to authorities.” But when asked if any of the welfare checks were called in by Roley’s relatives, Norris said none were.
“There has not been a no-contact order issued in our county,” Ellis said.
CNN reported that Roley’s grandfather said he “typically spoke with his grandson on a weekly basis,” except for the last month because Roley lost his phone.
Norris said Roley appeared to be living out of his vehicle and had relatives in the Priest River area, about 44 miles north of Coeur d’Alene. Roley’s grandfather said he moved to Idaho last summer “to be closer to his father,” NBC News reported.
When asked about Roley’s connection to Coeur d’Alene, Norris said, “We just don’t know. We know that he was a transient here, we knew that he lived here for the better part of 2024, but as far as when he got here, why he was here, why he chose this place, I don’t know.”
We found reports that Roley’s mother petitioned for an order of protection against his father. The Arizona Republic reported that 2015 divorce records show Roley’s family lived in Phoenix, and his father was “ordered to stay away from Roley and his mother.”
Jason Roley, his father, told CNN that “he wasn’t close with his son and hadn’t seen him since a family gathering last year.”
Social media posts by Roley’s family members after the shooting did not elaborate on their relationship. Jason Roley posted on Facebook saying, “I have no words” and offered condolences to the firefighters’ families.
Dale Roley, the suspect’s grandfather, posted on Facebook that the firefighters were “just doing (their) job” and “did not deserve this.”
About two months before the shooting, on Wess Roley’s May 1 birthday, an Instagram account that appeared to belong to Roley’s mother posted a birthday tribute to her son.
There’s no evidence to support that Roley had a criminal record and a no-contact order from his family. We rate that False.
PolitiFact Researcher Caryn Baird contributed to this report.
