Virginia Beach shines light on victims, not mass shooter

VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. (AP) — The victims of America's latest mass shooting had been dead for less than a day when police and city officials released a detailed presentation with their names, photos, job titles and the cities or towns in which they lived.

In all, 12 people — 11 of them city employees — were killed by the shooter who opened fire inside a municipal building.

Far less was revealed Saturday about the man who authorities say carried out the shootings. There was no photo. And authorities promised to utter his name only once: "DeWayne Craddock," a 40-year-old engineer who worked in the city's utilities department.

"We wanted to control that narrative," Steve Cover, Virginia Beach's deputy city manager of public safety, said of the news conference officials held the day after Friday's shooting. "We didn't want it to leak out piece by piece through family and friends and so forth through the media. We felt it was kind of our obligation to get that message out."

This sprawling city on Virginia's coast is employing an increasingly common public information strategy: Release more details about the victims of mass shootings than of the killers — at least initially — to limit the criminals' exposure and prevent copycat shootings.

A similar tack was taken in March after a mass shooting in New Zealand. Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern promised to deny a platform for the white supremacist who authorities said gunned down 50 people at two mosques.

"The goal is to kind of interrupt the cycle of new mass shooters citing previous ones, and the new mass shooters who are becoming role models for even more attackers," said Adam Lankford, a criminologist at the University of Alabama.

Lankford has studied the influence of publicity on future shooters and has urged the...