Did you see that cake with the words “Sorry I tased you” scrawled on it? A cop in Florida tasered a woman, who’s now suing. The cop allegedly apologized by baking the cake, featuring crudely drawn stick figures. The only problem with the photo that’s being passed around? It’s from at least a full year before the incident.
The story was first written in the Pensacola News Journal and went viral from there. Practically every news outlet jumped on the story, including Fox News, the New York Post, and New York magazine.
Correction 9/30/16, 12:30pm: This article previously said that the photo has ‘nothing to do with the actual incident’. While the cop who tasered the woman didn’t bake the cake, he allegedly did send this picture, apparently after finding it online, to the woman who’s now suing him. The Pensacola News originally reported that the cop had baked the cake but has since updated its story.
As Jon Passantino, a writer at Buzzfeed News, points out on Twitter, the original photo was posted to Imgur in 2014. As the original Pensacola News Journal article says, the incident involving the cop in Florida occurred in June of 2015.
From the Pensacola News Journal, about the real incident, which has nothing to do with the cake above:
The incident allegedly occurred in June 2015, when Wohlers finished his patrol shift and stopped to visit Byron at an apartment complex where she was employed. Documents from the Sheriff’s Office and the Criminal Justice Standards and Training Commission say Wohlers discharged his stun gun during “horseplay” with Byron, but Byron and her attorney said Wednesday there was no “play” involved in the incident.
Perhaps he was inspired by the viral image he saw from 2014. Or perhaps it’s part of a more elaborate hoax. We don’t know!
So what’s the story behind the cake from 2014? It was posted to Reddit with the headline, “A few days ago, I was accidentally tased by a cop while trying to break up a fight between several people. Here’s what he’s gotten me today.” But I’m going to take a wide guess that it’s a lie. Why? The Reddit user name for the person who posted it is i_lie_on_reddit_lol.
And given the person’s name (not to mention the suspiciously low image quality of the photo on Imgur) I’m going to take a wild guess that the image is even older than 2014.
Believe nothing.
Update 11:58pm: Okay, now this thing is getting even weirder. Apparently not content with spreading fake cake photos, local TV news stations are now creating their own versions of what the cake might look like.
ABC6 Action News in Philadelphia posted a photo of a different cake that it’s calling a “recreation.” Why? I honestly have no idea.
“Listen to this folks, a Florida woman’s lawsuit says a deputy shot her with a stun gun, then apologized with a cake that said ‘sorry I tased you’ in blue frosting,” the newscaster in Philadelphia said.
“Now this isn’t the actual cake, but trust me, it looked just like this one,” she continued. No, no it didn’t. Or, at least, we don’t know. Because the photo that has gone viral isn’t the one that’s at the center of the Florida woman’s lawsuit.
Update 9/30/2016, 12:00pm : Much like when you mix cake batter, the plot of this story continues to thicken. Follow updates here: