NBC News is backtracking on a report that one suspect in this morning’s mass shooting in Paris had been killed and two others were in custody.
The network sent out a mobile alert and reported those details on “NBC Nightly News” earlier this evening. NBC’s Pete Williams then went on MSNBC’s “Hardball” at 7pmET reporting that “there was some kind of shoot-out,” in a city north of Paris.
“What we’ve been told by several U.S officials is that this did end. The police were able to identify them relatively quickly — the police in Paris — find them and move in and encounter them. One was killed. The other two are in custody.”
An hour later, Williams was back on MSNBC telling Chris Hayes: “I think we can’t say with 100 percent certainty what the deal is over there right now. There are conflicting reports, is I think the honest answer.”
No other network had their own confirmation, but at 7pmET Greg Palkot reported on Fox News: “we are getting unconfirmed reports that the manhunt could be over and could be over right now with one dead and two injured. We are waiting on confirmation of that.”
Just after 9pmET, ABC News, the Wall Street Journal and other news orgs reported that the younger of the three suspects had turned himself in, while the two other suspects, who are related, were still on the loose.
More: An NBC News spokesperson responds: “NBC News issued an earlier report based on intelligence from two consistently reliable U.S. counterterrorism officials in different government agencies. As soon as it became evident that our sources doubted their information, we immediately updated our reporting across all platforms and continue to do so as this fast-moving story unfolds.”