Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Fast Forward

Father Of Sandy Hook Victim Awarded $450K From Man Who Said Shooting Was Faked

(JTA) — The father of a Jewish boy killed at the Sandy Hook Elementary School won a $450,000 judgment against the editor of a book that claimed the 2012 massacre at the school never happened.

A jury in Wisconsin determined the amount to be paid to Leonard Pozner, whose 6-year-old son Noah was the youngest of the 26 people killed at the Connecticut school.

The award came four months after a judge ruled that Pozner had been defamed by James Fetzer and Mike Palecek, editors of a book claiming that the government had staged the killing to advance gun control measures. According to the book, Pozner had faked his son’s death certificate to advance the conspiracy.

Fetzer, a retired professor emeritus at the University of Minnesota-Duluth, called the judgment “absurd” and said he plans to appeal, the Wisconsin State Journal reported. Palacek has already settled with Pozner for an undisclosed amount, according to The New York Times.

Pozner is a party to multiple lawsuits against those who claim the massacre was faked, including Alex Jones, the online provocateur who runs Infowars. Jones has also made claims to the effect that the parents of Sandy Hook victims are part of a plot to take away firearms.

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse..

Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.