Kai Spears

Here's a young college kid, man, getting $9 million.

Kai Spears was an 18-year-old freshman, a walk-on basketball player at the University of Alabama's Crimson Tide when the New York Times sports writer Billy Witts falsely identified Spears as being a pastor in a car at the site of a January 2023 fatal shooting of 23-year-old Jaime Harris.

The Times issued a lengthy editor's note to report the following June, but only after Spears filed a defamation lawsuit in the U.S. District Court of Northern Alabama.

They knew it was, after they reported

And a couple of months later, the New York Times sports reporter went to Alabama kind of with during the run up to the NCAA championships and thought he would check into this, which is a legitimate story.

You have a nationally ranked team where a few of the players and he gets a tip from a source, an anonymous source, that one of the players is an 18 year old freshman to walk on named Kai Spears.

And he gets the tip.

A couple hours later, he goes to the locker room, does a very brief interview with Spears, basically says, what was it like being in that car? He doesn't say, importantly, were you in the car? He says, what was it like? And Spears, this 18-year-old kid from West Virginia, says, I've been told not to talk about it.