The sister of the teacher killed at Sandy Hook slammed Scott Baio for sharing a meme suggesting that the shooting was a hoax.
Jillian Soto, whose sister Vicky was shot and killed in the 2012 school shooting, told the New York Daily News that she does not accept the “Happy Days” star’s apology.
“I can’t accept an apology from someone who spews hate. Whether he believes it or not, just sharing it has an impact,” she said. “His apology is not real. He personally chose to share this, then he chose to block my family when we tried to defend ourselves. That doesn’t feel like a sincere apology.”
Earlier this week Baio tweeted and then deleted an image suggesting the shooting in Newtown and the recent death of Heather Heyer in Charlottesville were both hoaxes in which Heyer’s and Soto’s mothers were played by the same actor.
In a follow-up tweet, he later expressed regret at having shared the image. “In retrospect, I wish I had thought longer about retweeting that conspiracy photo,” he wrote. “I shouldn’t have sent it. It was wrong.”
“To be honest, it’s heartbreaking,” Soto said. “My family has been attacked over and over. What people don’t understand is that no matter what they believe, every time this comes up, it rips my family apart to see my mom being attacked yet again.”