Claim: Garth Brooks was killed in a jet-ski accident.
Example:[Collected via e-mail, July 2012]
Musician - Garth Brooks dies following Jet-Ski crash in Turks and Caicos Islands
THIS STORY IS STILL DEVELOPING...
Musician Garth Brooks died while on a personal vacation in Turks and Caicos early this morning from injuries sustained in a Jet-Ski accident - July 14, 2012
Preliminary reports from Turks and Caicos Police officials indicate that the musician struck a concrete boat slip in a marina on Parrot Cay in the Turks and Caicos Islands. Garth Brooks was the only passenger on the personal watercraft at the time of the incident. Specific details are not yet available.
The accident occurred at approximately 8:45 a.m. (UTC/GMT -4 hours).
Additional details and information will be forthcoming.
Origins: Web sites such as mediafetcher.com allow users to generate phony news stories about celebrities being killed in various forms of accidents by plugging the names of the famous into the URLs used to access the site. For example, going to http://elton.john.mediafetcher.com/news/top_stories/jet-ski_musician_turks.php produces a fake article about Elton John's death today in a jet-ski accident.
Every few months another one of these faux user-generated articles is circulated on the Internet to fool the unwary, generating a brief but intense death hoax for the named celebrity. In July 2012, the latest "victim" of this form of hoax was country singer Garth Brooks, who remains alive and well.
