I think people subconsciously fill in details. These stories lack so much information that it's nearly impossible to conclude anything from them. But we see more than is there, filling it the holes with guesses and imagination.

One aspect of this is that people vastly overestimate how foreseeable an outcome is. If B occurs as a result of A, we tend to assume that B was an entirely foreseeable consequence of A, and that the person who did A either knew this or was an idiot for not knowing it.