Spike Lee and some of his 250k plus Twitter followers are accused of creating lots of commotion to one elderly Florida couple’s lives after reportedly spreading some misinformation by retweet. WESH explains.

“This week, Lee posted on Twitter an address in Sanford, reported to be that of George Michael Zimmerman, the man who claims he shot Trayvon Martin in self-defense. That address belongs to an elderly woman.”

That elderly woman, 70-year-old Elaine McClain, says her family has received hate mail, been the target of nasty phone calls and had to book a hotel because they feared for their safety.

“He definitely owes a big apology. All this is really scary and it’s a shame.”

So how’d this happen? CBS has a rundown of how the misfired tweet spread...

“The original tweet was sent out by Marcus D. Higgins, a 33-year-old Los Angeles man. Lee was one of the people Higgins tweeted to get the word out on March 23.”

Lee retweeted Mr. Higgins, with McClain’s full address the tweet spread like wildfire on the social network. Now -- Higgins is apologizing for the misinformation, writing.

@spikelee “GOD BLESS YOU I KNOW YOU HATE ME BUT I DON’T HATE YOU I DID APOLOGY FOR RETWEET THE WRONG ADDRESS.”[sic]

The International Business Times reports... “The ‘Do The Right Thing’ director -- who has almost 250,000 Twitter followers -- appears to have removed the address from his Twitter feed once it was discovered to be incorrect, but does not appear to have apologized or made any public statement.”

And there could be more trouble for Spike -- an attorney speaking to CNN says the couple could have grounds to take legal action against Mr. Lee.

“They absolutely do have recourse, this in my opinion is an invasion of their privacy, it’s defamatory.”

“There’s an easy remedy, Spike Lee should simply apologize. Offer to pay them to move back into their house.”