HARTFORD, Conn. — A Connecticut jury on Wednesday ordered broadcaster and conspiracy theorist Alex Jones to pay nearly $1 billion in damages to the families of eight Sandy Hook shooting victims and a law enforcement first responder to compensate them for a decade of abuse from people who believe his lies that the 2012 elementary school massacre was a hoax.
The astonishing $965 million compensatory damages verdict, after three and one-half weeks of gripping accounts of harassment from Jones and his followers, could increase in coming days with the addition of punitive damages, which are awarded for particularly outrageous and willful conduct.
Fifteen people sued Jones — parents, spouses and siblings of the 20 first graders and six educators murdered when a gunman shot his way into Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown with an assault rifle. Within hours of the murders, as relatives came to grips with their losses, Jones began what would become years of broadcasts to an audience of millions claiming that the relatives were actors in a phony production staged to win support for gun control.
