Texas crime, child killed at random

[Krasny-Volny]

So why was there an initial knee-jerk assumption that the shooter was white and committing a hate crime? It seems like some people were pretty quick to make that assumption.

I'm glad they have some suspects. Hopefully they've got the right people and enough evidence to convict.

The girl's sister riding in the front seat said she saw a white man with blue eyes in the truck, then the family's lawyers and the "community leaders" ran with it.

So either she's a terrible eyewitness, or she enjoys race baiting.

I'm inclined to believe that they said the shooter was white to get more attention from the public and law enforcement. Black man shoots black victim is not news in Houston. White man shoots black victim is. Like I've mentioned before, I lived in one of the bad areas of Houston and shootings happened all the time. Nobody gave a hoot, and the cops deliberately avoided those neighborhoods and therefore had sluggish response times and sluggish investigations.

For all we know Houston PD acted efficiently to catch the culprits this time precisely because of all the publicity this received. But it's an outlier. A heck of a lot of shootings in black neighborhoods like Sunnyside go unsolved and poorly investigated.

[Krasny-Volny]

It appears that the media massively fucked up on this one, and exposed underlying biases.

The media fucked up? How so?

They reported the culprit's description as fact, instead of alleged description, and speculated needlessly about the culprit's motives based on this erroneous description.

As a former resident of Houston I'm also incredibly skeptical that this would've received anywhere near the coverage it did in national media if the culprit was identified as black at the beginning. Like I said, black man shoots black victim is not news in that city, and the similar shootings I knew of didn't receive near the amount of airtime this one did, and often no airtime at all if the victim was an adult.

[Gravlen]

The media fucked up? How so?

They reported the culprit's description as fact, instead of alleged description,

I've only seen them report on his description as descriptions given by the witnesses, not as fact.

and speculated needlessly about the culprit's motives based on this erroneous description.

The only speculation about motive I've seen has been by the OP.