{"id":69411,"date":"2016-12-15T08:45:50","date_gmt":"2016-12-15T13:45:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=69411"},"modified":"2016-12-15T09:56:07","modified_gmt":"2016-12-15T14:56:07","slug":"bad-santa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=69411","title":{"rendered":"Bad Santa?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Eric<\/a> <\/center><\/p>\n

We wrote the other day <\/a>about Eric Schmitt-Matzen, a former Army Ranger dressed as Santa Clause who comforted a child as the child died in his arms. The Ranger Regiment verified his service with the 2d Battalion of the 75th Rangers in the earl 80s, but now the media is backtracking<\/a> on his story of the events in the hospital;<\/p>\n

Since publication, the News Sentinel has done additional investigation in an attempt to independently verify Schmitt-Matzen\u2019s account. This has proven unsuccessful. Although facts about his background have checked out, his story of bringing a gift to a dying child remains unverified. The News Sentinel cannot establish that Schmitt-Matzen\u2019s account is inaccurate, but more importantly, ongoing reporting cannot establish that it is accurate.<\/p>\n

Therefore, because the story does not meet the newspaper\u2019s standards of verification, we are no longer standing by the veracity of Schmitt-Matzen\u2019s account.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It’s a jungle out there. Another source<\/a> says they’ve verified part of the story;<\/p>\n

WBIR 10News has independently verified several critical details of this story, but has agreed not to publish those for the sake of privacy. Schmitt-Matzen maintains his desire to protect all names involved.<\/p>\n

In addition, Schmitt-Matzen’s wife, Sharon, of 38 years spoke with 10News on Wednesday night and also helped fill in details of her husband’s story and his response to what happened that day in what she said was mid-October. That differs from Schmitt-Matzen’s original account of the timeline, in which he said the death happened “about six weeks ago.” Schmitt-Matzen told 10News he had the time wrong and that his wife remembers those things better than he does.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We wrote the other day about Eric Schmitt-Matzen, a former Army Ranger dressed as Santa Clause who comforted a child as the child died in his arms. The Ranger Regiment verified his service with the 2d Battalion of the 75th Rangers in the earl 80s, but now the media is backtracking on his story of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[478],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-69411","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-none"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4ozh1-i3x","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69411","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=69411"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69411\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=69411"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=69411"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=69411"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}