A U.S. Marine staff sergeant who never set foot at Cornell University is getting death threats after being mistakenly named in a lawsuit over an alleged gang rape at the school — and the press corps that spent years lecturing Americans about accountability faces none of its own.
Staff Sergeant Matthew Ingalls, 23, was on active duty at Camp Lejeune when the alleged 2024 sexual assault took place at a Chi Phi fraternity house. He has never attended Cornell. But that didn't stop someone from serving a 101-page lawsuit to his family's New York home on Sept. 26 — intended for a different Matthew Ingalls, one of seven fraternity members accused in the case, the Free Press reported.
The damage was immediate. Ingalls started receiving messages calling him a rapist. His sister got dragged in too. "[Matthew] started getting a lot of messages asking him if he ever went to Cornell, calling him a rapist, all kinds of crazy aggressive messages… Then my daughter was getting messages as well, and she didn't know what was going on," his mother, Victoria Ingalls, told Stars and Stripes.
It escalated from there. People posted the family's address online. "The people that are posting his address, that are saying, 'I will find you. I will end you. I will kill you,' types of things are the scariest," Mrs. Ingalls said. Trash and other items are being hurled at their home.
Camp Lejeune officials released a statement to personnel and families clarifying that Ingalls was not the individual named in the suit and was serving "honorably" at the time of the alleged assault. The DCNF reached out to the base for further comment but did not receive an immediate response. The Ingalls family has retained legal counsel.
Meanwhile, the broader media class isn't just failing to get basic facts right — it's using the Cornell case as a political weapon. Washington Examiner reported that ABC commentator Cottle linked the alleged assault to President Trump without offering a shred of evidence. The alleged attack occurred in October 2024, when Joe Biden was in office. No matter. Cottle turned disturbing allegations into a smear, and ABC didn't challenge her to substantiate the claim.
So the picture is clear: an innocent Marine gets dragged into a lawsuit, his family gets death threats, and the same media ecosystem that can't be bothered to verify a name before ruining a servicemember's life is busy spinning the case for partisan ends. No retractions. No consequences. Just the usual blast radius around ordinary Americans while the press moves on to the next segment.
The Ingalls family is left living with threats at their front door. The people who put them there will sleep fine tonight.
