Viral 'Avocado as Grenade' Liquor-Store Robbery Post Is Fake, Local Paper Finds: No Such Store, No Such Arrest
A post claiming a man in Pensacola, Florida, robbed a liquor store with an avocado painted to look like a grenade has gone viral on Facebook and X. The Pensacola News Journal, the city's local newspaper, checked the claim item by item on November 10 and found it was fake: the liquor store named in the post does not exist in Escambia County, there is no arrest record for the man named, and the incident never happened.
The viral post claimed that Dylan Raines, 29, entered a store called Gulf Coast Spirits, demanded money with an avocado and said he would 'pull the pin.' It added that a cashier named Marcus Bell, who happened to be a mixed martial artist, took Raines down and that Raines was arrested by the Pensacola Police Department. The News Journal found no Gulf Coast Spirits in Escambia County — the closest liquor store with that name is in Louisiana — and Escambia County arrest records show no one named Dylan Raines being arrested.
According to the News Journal, the post originated on November 4 on a Facebook page called 'Post of The Day.' The page has more than 102,000 followers and describes itself as satire; its posts consist of AI-generated images of crude humor, many written like local news stories. The original post was shared more than 1,700 times and was then picked up by pages built around sharing viral content, including local Pensacola groups and a page called 'Tipsy Bartender' with more than 34 million followers, without the satire disclosure. Some pages rewrote the story and falsely credited NBC News and the Pensacola News Journal as the source; the paper said neither outlet had made those claims and neither had published any story on the alleged crime before this fact-check.
The paper also noted that people who search for the story on Google can be misled, because Google's Gemini repeats the story as a real incident and links to the social media posts as sources. There is a small grain of truth behind the tale, but nothing related to Pensacola: in 2019, a 47-year-old man in Israel was arrested after robbing two banks with an avocado made to look like a grenade, a story credible Israeli outlets reported at the time and international press picked up. The paper said most AI companies use news stories like the 2019 one as training data. GSM does not republish the generated image from the viral post and reports only what the local paper's check established.
Source: Pensacola News Journal
Published by GSM · USA (original Chinese edition)
Photo: 图：Hass 牛油果资料图，一颗完整、一颗切开（Ivar Leidus 摄，CC BY-SA 4.0，经 Wikimedia Commons），已裁为16:9，非网传帖配图。/ A Hass avocado, whole and halved, a file photo (by Ivar Leidus, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons), cropped to 16:9; not an image from the viral post.
