A Springfield, Ohio, woman who sparked rumors about Haitian migrants eating pets says she is filled with regret and insists she never intended to target the Haitian community.
Erika Lee, 35, spoke out after she warned locals in a Facebook group that her ‘neighbor informed me that her daughter’s friend lost her cat’, only to find the pet strung up ‘from a branch’ outside the home of a Haitian family.
But Lee now admits that she had no firsthand knowledge of the claims, and the neighbor referenced in the post, Kimberly Newton, revealed that she also heard the story from an acquaintance and not her daughter.
But before the confusing back-and-forth was resolved – with police also insisting no reports have been filed over pets being eaten – the rumor went viral.
‘It just exploded into something I didn’t mean to happen,’ Erika Lee told NBC News – after the wild conspiracy even found its way into Donald Trump’s presidential debate material.
Lee’s Facebook post sparked panic across social media after screenshots were circulated around X, in which she warned Haitian migrants were hanging cats ‘from a branch like you’d do a deer for butchering, and they were carving it up to eat.’
‘I’ve been told they are doing this to dogs, they have been doing it at Snyder Park with the ducks and geese,’ she continued, claiming to be ‘told that last bit by rangers and police.’
‘Please keep a close eye on these animals,’ she signed off the post.
The post caught the eye of conservatives, with many also seizing upon footage of an American woman who allegedly stomped on a cat’s head before eating the animal in a wild video that was falsely attributed to the Haitian migrant community.
Lee now says she never expected her post to ‘get past Springfield’, and has since deleted the post as she did not anticipate it sparking a national rumor.
Lee first admitted to Newsguard that she heard the rumor of Haitian migrants eating cats in her town through her neighbor Kimberly Newton, who heard it through a friend, who heard it from the alleged cat owner.
Newton, when asked, said she was ‘not sure I’m the most credible source.’
‘I don’t actually know the person who lost the cat,’ she told NewsGuard, a company that counters misinformation. ‘I don’t have any proof.’
She said the cat’s owner was ‘an acquaintance of a friend’. Newton originally heard it from her friend, who had heard it from a ‘source that she had’ before she told Lee, who then posted about it.
Newton also clarified that her source was not through her daughter, like Lee claimed.
While city officials said they had no evidence that Springfield pets were in danger, locals say it’s a problem online.
‘In response to recent rumors alleging criminal activity by the immigrant population in our city, we wish to clarify that there have been no credible reports or specific claims of pets being harmed, injured, or abused by individuals within the immigrant community,’ Springfield officials said.
Despite Ohio authorities stressing that there are no reports for them to even investigate, the rumor circulated widely enough that both men at the top of the Republican ticket echoed it.
JD Vance mentioned the rumor on his X account, writing: ‘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?’
A day later, Trump would reiterated similar statements during the debate, which was broadcasted to 67 million Americans.
Lee was ‘shocked’ to see what she shared on Facebook make it all the way to the former president.
‘Honestly, it blew me away,’ she told NewsGuard. ‘I didn’t think that any of this would explode to the presidency.’
Despite her 15-minutes of fame, she says she hasn’t ‘really been following the news much on it at all.’
‘I’ve only really seen it like on Facebook, what things pop up on my news feed, or what other people have shared on things that they have read up on,’ she said.
She also reiterated that all she was trying to do was inform people,’ and wasn’t saying ‘Haitians as a whole [are] bad.’