Maybe I’m just face-blind or being dense but the photos from the scene of the crime look like a different dude than the ginning hostel check in guy. The jackets and backpacks are different. Although people can have multiple jackets and backpacks. We don’t see much of the shooters face but the eyebrows look different. Although, people can pluck/shave eyebrows. I guess the happy hostel guy would have come forward and been like “WTF?” and “I have an alibi” if it wasn’t him?
Accounting for that, the hostel guy seems to have a rucksack or similar. They’re quite distinct and notable bags. If it’s not actually a rucksack, it’s something with similar design elements, maybe a knockoff, since rucksacks tend to be rather expensive.
Rucksacks are popular with people who hike/move around a lot, the kind of people who would stop at a hostel for a night before moving on to another area/location/city/country, usually by non-typical means (hiking, walking, hitch hiking, etc).
That’s just the personality type for one such person who would use such a combination of products, and by no means should describe, or imply a description, of the individual illustrated in the image. My entire point to saying any of this is that it’s a very district design.
The shooter has a very simple backpack that lacks most of the notable features that I can see from the backpack/rucksack that the hostel person is using.
They’re both backpacks, but one is notably different than the other.
While it’s feasible they just switched backpacks, IMO it’s far more likely that they’re simply different people.
To me, this kind of naming and shaming attitude of a person of interest in an ongoing investigation by the press is disgusting.
If the images here depict two different people as I suspect they do, then the individual in the hostel images is likely to suffer consequences as a result of the brash and hasty release of their images by the press. It will likely affect them for years to come.
It makes for enticing headlines, that’s for sure, but it’s abysmal journalism. They don’t seem to have any standards left regarding the truth, only whatever will attract the most views/clicks/reads/whatever.
It’s kinda crazy because I own the backpack he had on during the incident, it’s a peak design camera bag and it’s pretty expensive. Definitely not the bag the dude at the hostel is wearing.
I have a rucksack, and the design elements I can see from the hostel seem to match up pretty good.
Unless this individual has two fairly costly backpacks that they’re just swapping between, I think the media is calling out an innocent person.