Springfield’s Erika Lee has been traced as the ground zero of the rumor that Haitian immigrants are eating pet cats and dogs. The rumor started from her Facebook post which she did not even expect to reach beyond Springfield. To her surprise, her fourth-hand information reached the presidential debate stage as GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump spouted the theory to blame Joe Biden- Kamala Harris administration’s immigration policy.
Erika told NBC News that she is not a racist and regrets that her Facebook post has snowballed into such a massive controversy. “I’m not a racist. Everybody seems to be turning it into that, and that was not my intent,” she said adding that her daughter is half- black and she herself is mixed race and a member of the LGBTQ community.
What Erika posted was not her first hand knowledge but something that she heard from her neighbor Kimberly Newton. Newton got the story from a friend whose acquaintance apparently had the first hand story.
Erika Lee’s Facebook post and a misplaced photo
While Erika Lee’s Facebook post became the center of the conspiracy theory, the right-wingers picked a photo of a person carrying ducks and claimed that he was a Haitian immigrant going to eat the geese.
Now it has been established that the photo was not from Springfield but from Columbus, which is also in Ohio. The photographer said he posted the photo on Reddit because he thought it was something that does not happen daily that a man carries dead ducks in his hand.
Now the Ohio Division of Wildfire has confirmed that the man was actually picking up two geese that were hit in a car accident. There was no evidence that the man is an immigrant or Haitian or had plans to eat the geese.