Poor Melissa Huckaby!And no,I'm not talking about the accused Sunday school teacher from Tracy,CA.The Melissa Huckaby I'm referring to is a Sunday school teacher from the very close by Manteca,CA.Isn't it kind of freakish that there are two Sunday school teachers from the San Joaquin area named Melissa Huckaby?
But,bearing the same name as an accused killer has been more than freaky for Melissa Huckaby.This is one case of mistaken identity that has folks freaking out on a woman who had nothing to do with Sandra Cantu's murder.And that's why this Melissa Huckaby has my sympathy!
Here's more on how the confusion began from SF Gate:
"Both are single moms, and both around the same age. One key difference is that the Melissa on the left, although publicly accused of the same crime as the Melissa on the right, is the victim of mistaken identity.
Herein lies a multi-layered problem in journalism, one that could have led to a rush to judgment. But the person writing this now has watched this metastasizing and malignant metamorphosis first hand and learned -- never rush to judgment in the rush to air.
Melissa Huckaby on the left was mistakenly identified as the suspect by a local Bay Area television station. An employee in a television newsroom got the name of the suspect and then, apparently, found a picture of a woman with the same name living close to where the killing took place. Proximity her only crime, the Melissa Huckaby on the left used the social networking site - MySpace. Her picture was found there, then put on the air.
The falsely identified woman's MySpace account is now closed, and she and her family no doubt wonder if or when they can walk Manteca streets safely again.
What the free and likely disillusioned Melissa Huckaby learned in this cruelest of ways is when journalists don't do their jobs well, lives get broken and innocents harmed. What she likely does not understand is how endemic this problem is in newsrooms across the country, where life altering mistakes happen every day - mistakes that often damage much more than reputations. Some "mistakes" have the power to bring democracy to its knees, leaving citizens without access to diligently checked, thoroughly vetted information from various sources - so they can decide for themselves what to believe."(END OF EXCERPT)Read the rest here.
