A Hawaii civil servant, Jeffrey Wong, was harassed after being incorrectly identified as the worker who sent a false alert about a missile attack, The Washington Post reported.
Several news organizations used an archived Associated Press photo of Wong to illustrate stories of the actual worker who made the error Jan. 13, but the photo of Wong was from a July Associated Press story about Hawaii preparing for a North Korea missile threat, the report said.
"A lot of anger, a lot of ignorance came out as a result of that," Wong told the Associated Press.
Some commenters said Wong should be shot or water-boarded, while others questioned his loyalty to the U.S. or to Hawaii. Others issued racially derogatory comments, the report said.
The identity of the worker who sent the alert has not been revealed to the public, The Post reported.
At the time of the alert, Wong was attending a Civil Air Patrol conference at a Kauai hotel, where he helped to usher other hotel guests to safety over the false alert, the report said.
The person who sent the false alert said Friday he was "100 percent sure" at the time he sent the alert that the attack was real.
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