Mark Hughes, man wrongly ID'd as Dallas shooting suspect: 'We've been getting death threats'

Caitlin Dickson
·Reporter

Mark Hughes, the Dallas protester who was wrongly identified as a suspect in the deadly police shooting there, spoke to CBS News Thursday night after he was released by police without charges.

“We’ve been getting death threats,” said Hughes, whose photograph was tweeted by the Dallas Police Department in the immediate aftermath of the shooting along with the message “This is one of our suspects. Please help us find him!”

The image shows Hughes carrying a gun, which he and friends said was not loaded. Licensed gun owners have been legally permitted to carry unconcealed firearms in public in Texas since January.

Not long after he had been labeled a suspect, footage began circulating across social media that appeared to show Hughes standing among a confused crowd of protesters immediately after shots had been fired.

Hughes said he was shocked to learn that his image was being circulated across social media and national news outlets, as he’d been “talking to police, laughing and joking with police officers” before the shooting started.

“We received a phone call that my face was on there as a suspect, and immediately I flagged down a police officer,” Hughes told CBS Dallas.

Despite being cleared by police after 30 minutes of interrogation, Hughes said he had not received an apology for the wrongful identification. As of Friday morning, the original tweet declaring Hughes a suspect had not been removed from the Dallas Police Department’s Twitter feed.

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