In the wake of Hurricane Helene, misinformation spread from and about Western North Carolina almost immediately — with false claims ranging from the government manufacturing the storm to conspiratorial stories of federal agents trying to steal land from residents.
One false claim — that more than 140 bodies were discovered in Buncombe County and were being left out of the state tally — went viral online after a news article published information stemming from a volunteer group called the Western Carolina Emergency Network (WCEN). BPR fact-checked the claim and disproved it in a story published on October 25. BPR then investigated the origin of these claims.
Four people — Chris Larsen, Will McGuire, Mindy Toole and Crystal Suazo — founded WCEN on October 4, public documents from the North Carolina Secretary of State show. The North Carolina-based organization filed with the Secretary of State on October 16 and has raised more than $150,000 on GoFundMe to fund “rescue and relief operations.” Toole and Suazo are both listed as Certified Public Accountants.
READ MORE: Fact check: Claim that 100+ bodies aren’t counted in Helene death toll is false
On October 15, a WCEN volunteer named Don Shuffler posted on his TikTok account where he goes by LumberJackPatriot.
“Just seeing the news for the first time in a week, um, the death toll is not right,” he begins.
In the video — viewed more than 45,000 times — Shuffler claimed to have run search and rescue missions for WCEN. Shuffler lists specific locations and tallies of where and how many bodies were found.
On TikTok, he claimed to have documented:
- 90 [bodies] along [Highway] 70
- 12 [bodies] by the “high school in Swannanoa”
- 3 [bodies] on Bee Tree Road
- 2 [bodies] on Moffitt Road
- 30 [bodies] in the river near 19 Good Loop Road
“I have 145 just in Swannanoa … so the math ain’t mathing,” he said, comparing his numbers to the official state count at the time, kept by the NC Department of Health and Human Services, which was 95 people — including 43 in Buncombe County. (Now, nearly three weeks later, the total number of confirmed fatalities statewide has risen to 101 and 43 in Buncombe).
In the video, Shuffler then continued to give out numbers of thousands of body bags that he claimed to have delivered around Western North Carolina. Shuffler claims to have knowledge of the situation through “teams that I was running for search and rescue, or [a] state police source that we are working with was telling us about.”
Nothing on Shuffler’s LinkedIn indicates that he has any background in search and rescue missions. In a podcast interview the previous week, he said he works in maintenance and lives east of Raleigh.
On October 16, a day after Shuffler’s video was posted, FITSNews, a publication based in South Carolina, cited WCEN as a source for 142 bodies in Buncombe County. The article listed a count totaling 143 bodies, but it did not name an individual source.
Hannah Stutts, a volunteer who supports outside media relations for WCEN, told BPR that she gave FITSNews the numbers and sources within WCEN who could corroborate the numbers. She declined to share the names of those sources or any evidence with BPR News that would support the inflated fatality count.
Prior to the FITSNews article, Stutts shared videos of an inflated death toll on her social media platforms, often accumulating hundreds of thousands of views. In the videos, she promoted different ways viewers can donate to WCEN — including through her Venmo account that lists her name and the name of her business in Wake County.
One of Stutts’ videos — where she claims 10,000 body bags were being delivered around the state — started to go viral, garnering 2.4 million views as of November 1.
“Whatever you think you know about Western North Carolina and what’s going on there, you’re wrong,” she begins.
She then proceeds to discredit the government’s death toll. “I don't really want to start a bunch of conspiracy theories or anything like that, but I do feel like word needs to get out about what is actually happening that news is not covering.”
As the social media posts and FITSNews article gathered millions of views online, Swannanoa Fire Deputy Chief Larry Pierson wrote a Facebook post asking people to take down any false information they had posted.
“We have seen inaccurate social media posts claiming their information is 'verified' with no sources stating who verified it and no response when questions are asked,” Pierson wrote on October 19. “From the actual responders from hour one, the boots on the ground, the ones who have been involved in rescuing and recovering our people, nobody is 'hiding numbers.'
“There are inflated numbers of body bags ordered, insinuating there are that many more that the public isn't being told about. Untrue.”
“If you have shared a social media post that claims what we are referring to, please delete it... it is not helping our valley.”
In an interview Nov. 4, Pierson told BPR: "When the misinformation goes out, we're having to take time away from the other work to manage their misinformation ... When someone starts that there's hundreds more bodies, it's not making sense to us because we're not hearing about them on the ground. From the search teams that are actual — the real search teams ... I have to look at facts."
When asked by BPR on October 29 if she stands by the inflated numbers, Stutts said she did.
BPR reached out to Shuffler but received no response.
BPR fact-checked the claim that bodies were found and unaccounted for by the state with sources from law enforcement, state officials, funeral homes and other volunteer organizations.
BPR found no evidence that this claim was true, with many official sources outright denying it. BPR also interviewed the co-founder of WCEN, Chris Larsen who said he did not provide any numbers to reporters.
The current death toll from the storm in North Carolina is 101.
Messages show members debate removing posts
Internal messages between WCEN volunteers and leaders obtained by BPR show recognition that the numbers they shared may be inaccurate.
The group chat, which BPR News was given screenshots from, includes the full names of many volunteers and in some cases, profile photos that match photos found on other social media platforms. Some volunteers of the chat also share links to their social media accounts in the groupchat. The group chat was formed among volunteers designated for marketing and fundraising responsibilities.
As Stutts’ video started gaining traction, others on social media began to spread the claims she made of an inaccurate death count and the numbers of body bags the group distributed.
Toole, in the group chat, applauded Stutts for “going viral” and sent a screenshot of a separate post on X that quotes Stutts’ inaccurate body bag and death toll numbers.
Shuffler writes to the group, “welp there’s that body bag number again lol.”
Stutts replies “oops” and that it is “too late now” to correct the body bag numbers.
Toole, one of WCEN's founding members, wrote to the group in the chat that the video — despite the misinformation — “brings attention and [is] going viral. That is what makes these things happen.”
Toole declined to speak on record with BPR.
The texts show the group later debating the accuracy of the body bag numbers Stutts used in the video. She claimed 10,000 body bags had been distributed but the group ultimately settled on using the “4,140 we can account for.”
They don’t mention the death toll numbers.
The day the FITSNews article was published, Shuffler wrote to the group that the numbers — including the claim of more than 140 people found dead in Buncombe — he posted on TikTok were, to the best of his knowledge, correct.
READ MORE: Leaders of Savage Freedom group call out misinformation, work to keep national attention on WNC
Shuffler asked members of the organization if he should delete the video with the exaggerated death toll, screenshots of the group chat show.
The group chat shows WCEN volunteers debating whether to take their social media posts down.
Several members weighed in and ultimately decided against taking down the video because doing so “fuels the fire,” a message from volunteer Rebecca Ross said.
The conversation continued into the next day when McGuire, the group’s co-founder, texted a separate group chat with WCEN members that “it doesn’t matter. We’ve created the shock factor,” before advising that the group should focus on messaging about helping victims of the storm.
McGuire did not respond to requests for comment from BPR.
Stutts said the FITSNews article “made all of us take a step back, because we got a lot of negative feedback from authorities…questioning the numbers that we had given and also the public,” she told BPR. “That's when they decided that they didn't want to really further comment on those numbers because they were worried about it affecting their fundraising.”
On October 17, following more confirmation from the group that he should not take his video down, Shuffler responded “good cuz my tic toc [sic] is going nuts lately haha.” McGuire responded with a laughing emoji.
In BPR’s fact-check of the inflated death toll, WCEN’s cofounder Chris Larsen was asked about the false claims attributed to his group.
“I will say that we don't have any official statistics. And if anybody from the Western Carolina Emergency Network was quoted, there's certainly not some official source of that. And that's the challenge when you're bringing groups together as a network,” Larsen said.
It is unclear if Larsen was in the WCEN group chat where numbers were discussed or if he knew that members of his team were spreading these claims online and to media outlets.
Shuffler stopped referencing the death toll on his main TikTok account, LumberJackPatriot, but on a second TikTok account named LumberJackPatriot0, he continues to claim that the official death toll is wrong.
He also says he doesn’t have evidence because he doesn’t use his phone during missions.
“There's no search and rescue team on the planet that goes into a search and rescue situation with their phones out. They're not thinking about gathering evidence. They're thinking about saving lives. That's why you're not seeing proof,” he said on the LumberJackPatriot0 account on October 28.
Bonafide search and rescue missions are well documented, according to response and recovery operational plan documents from the Department of Homeland Security and other retired law enforcement who have been running search and rescue missions in Swannanoa.
Pierson told BPR: "There's a process with the sheriff's office where a detective comes out and the sheriff's office documents the scene, photograph, write report, document. And from that point, the person is transported. Once it gets to the morgue, the hospital part and things like that, that process is done there and then that paperwork and report they compile together is going to end up going to the state medical examiner's office."
