High Speed Chase, Falsification

On Thursday, March 12, right after my last class of the week and therefore at the very beginning of my spring break, I decided to visit a friend of mine on Richardson Street.  I walked out of my house on Hamilton Street and proceeded to walk down Louis Street, towards Easton Avenue.  All was normal until I reached the intersection of Louis Street and Guilden Street, where I was greeted by a throng of students, families, and onlookers.  The section of Guilden Street located behind St. Peter's Hospital was roped off with police tape, and there was a generally frenzied atmosphere.  A friend of mine happened to be there, and he informed me that a bank in Franklin had just been robbed and that the robbers had just led the police on a high speed chase down Route 27, ending at the dead end of Guilden Street.  He had heard gun shots, and told me that shots were exchanged between the criminals and the police.  

Later, when I read about the incident in the newspaper, I discovered that my friends report was not far from the truth.  The high speed chase ended in New Brunswick, where shots were first fired by some of the 4 criminals, to which police responded with shots of their own.  Three of the suspects were shot, but all survived and will no doubt see significant jail time.  

Yesterday, I bumped into a fellow classmate of mine (we'll call him Matt) from high school.  We asked the usual questions ("What have you been up to?") and then got on the topic of this bank robbery and high speed chase.  According to Matt, the Bank of America in New Brunswick was robbed, the criminals were chased behind St. Peters, and three of the criminals were shot dead.

I didn't have the heart to correct him, since his story was told with such enthusiasm and awe.  After the exchange, we went our separate ways.

This anecdote is a great example of how information can be lost, changed, and completely mutated over time and across space.  My friend who experienced the event firsthand (at least the tail-end of the event) had more accurate information than Matt, and he probably got a cursory story from a police officer.  Matt, who had the benefit of seeing newspaper reports and general news coverage for 2 weeks after the incident, couldn't have gotten the details more wrong.  I assumed that rumors start from directly after an incident and then explode as time goes on.  Obviously, this is how Matt heard his fanciful and highly inaccurate tale.  However, my friend who was there for the action got the information all right.  Could a falsity such as Matt's have its beginnings in an account as accurate as the firsthand witness's?  It's hard to answer this, but one thing is sure: information has a tendency to become exaggerated and warped over time, as more and more people add their ridiculous views to simple events.