United Airline’s forceful removal of a passenger on Sunday is not your typical social media story that spikes so quickly then disappears within a day. Two days later, it is still trending on platforms around the world, including China’s Weibo, prompting United’s stock to drop and causing a commotion for the removed passenger's hometown paper, which dug into the man's background.

The video that caused a national uproar Monday went global overnight and, per a Wall Street Journal reporter, accumulated some 290 million video views in China’s version of Twitter, Weibo.

https://twitter.com/tepingchen/status/851794869504811008

Weibo is believed to have some 313 million monthly users, according to the most recent figures.

Reactions in China follow an almost 24-hour onslaught of criticism in the U.S. where the decision to forcefully remove a passenger from a United Airlines flight at O’Hare International Airport in Chicago on Sunday set off a chain of events that has resulted in a noticeable drop in the company’s stock price.

The video showing police officers forcibly removing a man, David Dao , from his seat and dragging him down the plane’s passenger aisle was uploaded on Sunday. By Monday morning, the airline had responded to criticism on Twitter saying that due to an overbooked flight, the man asked to leave the flight but refused.

https://twitter.com/united/status/851374956218798081

As the story went viral on social media and became a leading story on cable news, United Airlines CEO Oscar Munoz offered a statement apologizing for “having to re-accommodate these customers.” Critics took issue with the company’s use of the euphemism “re-accommodate” to describe what many saw in the video.

https://twitter.com/united/status/851471781827420160

https://twitter.com/juliacarriew/status/851475184263471104

The statement was followed by remarks from Munoz to the company’s employees, which described Dao as “disruptive and belligerent.” Those comments drew more criticism.

By Tuesday morning, the story was still developing. Fortune reported that a 6.3 percent decline in pre-market trading of United stock on Tuesday translated to a $1.4 billion drop. By mid-morning Tuesday, the stock was still down more than 2 percent. Many attributed the drop in stock price to the outrage in social media.

https://twitter.com/FortuneMagazine/status/851827192552206337

https://twitter.com/brianstelter/status/851834934318829572

Dao, the man at the center of the story, also drew the attention of his hometown newspaper, the Louisville Courier-Journal. On Tuesday, the paper published an online story under a headline that said Dao had “a troubled past.”

The paper reported that “documents allege that he was involved in fraudulent prescriptions for controlled substances and was sexually involved with a patient who used to work for his practice and assisted police in building a case against him.”

It went on: “Dao was convicted of multiple felony counts of obtaining drugs by fraud or deceit in November 2004 and was placed on five years of supervised probation in January 2005, according to the documents. He surrendered his medical license the next month.”

Because Dao had become the subject of such sympathy for the way he was treated and the way he had been described in so many media reports — as a doctor who said he needed to get to his patients in Louisville — the Courier-Journal found itself on the receiving end of criticism for having published an online story that shared the man’s criminal past.

https://twitter.com/ScottMcGrew/status/851809076124176384

https://twitter.com/BecketAdams/status/851798737739558912

Another journalist found herself on the same hot seat as the Courier-Journal when she tweeted a photo of her desk stacked with “court & legal docs” on Dao. The tweet received thousands of replies, mostly critical, with one pointed response coming from a Guardian reporter who tweeted a photo of her desk with a sign that read, “your job is not to do PR for an airline company.”

https://twitter.com/juliacarriew/status/851845660915539968

Let’s recap: Video goes viral in China, United Airlines stock falls, victim’s hometown newspaper digs up dirt on him. Could this story get any worse for United Airlines?

Update: United Airlines CEO Oscar Munoz offered a new statement Tuesday after the company’s stock had fallen. In his new statement, Munoz apologized for what describes as a “truly horrific event” and said the company takes responsibility for what happened.

“Like you, I continue to be disturbed by what happened on this flight and I deeply apologize to the customer forcibly removed and to all the customers aboard,” Munoz said in a written statement. “It’s never too late to do the right thing … I promise you we will do better.”

https://twitter.com/davidshepardson/status/851872696149397504

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Email: luis.gomez@sduniontribune.com

Twitter: @RunGomez

UPDATES:

1:10 p.m.: This article was updated with new remarks from United Airlines CEO Oscar Munoz.

This article was originally published at 11:30 a.m.