'It just exploded': Springfield woman claims she never meant to spark false rumors about Haitians

The woman behind an early Facebook post about Haitian immigrants eating local pets that helped thrust a small Ohio city into the national spotlight says she had no first-hand knowledge of any such incident and is now filled with regret and fear as a result of the ensuing fallout.

SPRINGFIELD, Ohio — The woman behind an early Facebook post spreading a harmful and baseless claim about Haitian immigrants eating local pets that helped thrust a small Ohio city into the national spotlight says she had no firsthand knowledge of any such incident and is now filled with regret and fear as a result of the ensuing fallout.

“It just exploded into something I didn’t mean to happen,” Erika Lee, a Springfield resident, told NBC News on Friday.

Lee recently posted on Facebook about a neighbor’s cat that went missing, adding that the neighbor told Lee she thought the cat was the victim of an attack by her Haitian neighbors.

Newsguard, a media watchdog that monitors for misinformation online, found that Lee had been among the first people to publish a post to social media about the rumor, screenshots of which circulated online. The neighbor, Kimberly Newton, said she heard about the attack from a third party, NewsGuard reported. 

Newton told Newsguard that Lee’s Facebook post misstated her story, and that the owner of the missing cat was “an acquaintance of a friend” rather than her daughter’s friend. Newton could not be reached for comment.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/-just-exploded-springfield-woman-says-never-meant-spark-rumors-haitian-rcna171099


Post ID: 721a0058-059b-4d54-ae7d-02ddc622543c
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Updated: 1 month ago
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