An Ohio woman whose Facebook post sparked harmful rumors about Haitian immigrants eating pets in Springfield has admitted the claims are false, saying she regrets how they’ve spiraled into a political frenzy and flashpoint in the 2024 presidential race.
“It just exploded into something I didn’t mean to happen,” Erika Lee, a Springfield resident of four years, told NBC News.
Lee, a 35-year-old hardware store worker, said she had no actual firsthand knowledge when she took to Facebook to pen a post about a missing pet. She wrote that her neighbor, Kimberly Newton, told her that “her daughter’s friend had lost her cat.”
“One day, she came home from work, as soon as she stepped out of her car, looked towards a neighbor’s house, where Haitians live, and saw her cat hanging from a branch, like they’d do a deer for butchering and they were carving it up to eat,” read the since-deleted post, per screenshots circulating online. “I’ve been told they are doing this to dogs, they have been doing it at Snyder Park with the ducks and geese.”
According to NewsGuard, a media watchdog that monitors for misinformation on the web, Lee’s post was likely the first to tout the unfounded pet-eating claims.
“I’m not sure I’m the most credible source because I don’t actually know the person who lost the cat,” Newton, Lee’s neighbor, told the outlet in response to questions about the rumor she passed along.
She told NewsGuard the cat’s owner was actually “an acquaintance of a friend” — and that friend was the person who told her the rumor, which they in turn had heard from a separate source.
“I don’t have any proof,” she added.
Other posts parroting the pet-eating claims have since popped up online, including one from Ohio senator and Republican VP candidate JD Vance.
On Sept. 9, he shared a post on X that read: “Months ago, I raised the issue of Haitian illegal immigrants draining social services and generally causing chaos all over Springfield, Ohio. Reports now show that people have had their pets abducted and eaten by people who shouldn’t be in this country. Where is our border czar?”
Months ago, I raised the issue of Haitian illegal immigrants draining social services and generally causing chaos all over Springfield, Ohio.
Reports now show that people have had their pets abducted and eaten by people who shouldn’t be in this country. Where is our border czar? pic.twitter.com/rf0EDIeI5i
— JD Vance (@JDVance) September 9, 2024
The following day, former President Donald Trump brought up the third-hand gossip during his first presidential debate with Vice President Kamala Harris, which was broadcast to 67 million people.
“In Springfield, they’re eating the dogs — the people that came in, they’re eating the cats,” Trump said Tuesday. “They’re eating the pets of the people that live there, and this is what’s happening in our country, and it’s a shame.”
Here’s Trump getting fact-checked on the Springfield/immigrants eating pets hoax and just desperately responding “they said it on TV” pic.twitter.com/nHBOBJuDqP
— jordan (@JordanUhl) September 11, 2024
Officials in the Ohio city have pushed back on the pet-eating rumors in the days since, with City Manager Bryan Heck emphasizing “there have been no credible reports or specific claims of pets being harmed, injured or abused by individuals within the immigrant community.”
But the fallout has still been severe. On Thursday, Springfield City Hall was evacuated due to bomb threats and several schools in the area were forced to close following similar threats on Friday.
Lee told NBC News she never imagined her Facebook post would spiral so out of control. She added that she doesn’t harbor any ill will toward the Haitian community and lamented the fact that her post had become conspiracy theory fodder.
“I’m not a racist,” she said, adding that her daughter is half Black and she herself is mixed race and a member of the LGBTQ community. “Everybody seems to be turning it into that, and that was not my intent.”
Lee said she has since pulled her daughter from school and now fears for her family’s safety given the mania surrounding the claims. She added that she’s also worried for the Haitian community, who she had no intention of villainizing.
“I feel for the Haitian community,” she said. “If I was in the Haitians’ position, I’d be terrified, too, worried that somebody’s going to come after me because they think I’m hurting something that they love and that, again, that’s not what I was trying to do.”