According to an investigation by Newsguard Reality Check, the rumor appears to have started in early September with a now deleted post in a private Facebook group called “Springfield Ohio Crime and Information” where a resident posted a “warning to all about our beloved pets & those around us” in which she said:
My neighbor informed me that her daughters friend had lost her cat. … One day she came home from work, as soon as she stepped out of her car, looked towards a neighbors house, where Haitians live, & saw her cat hanging from a branch, like you’d do a deer for butchering, & they were carving it up to eat. I’ve been told they are doing this to dogs …
Newsguard contacted the author of the post, Erika Lee, and the neighbor who she heard the story from, Kimberly Newton:
“I’m not sure I’m the most credible source because I don’t actually know the person who lost the cat,” Newton said about the rumor she had passed on to her neighbor[.] Newton explained to NewsGuard that the cat owner was “an acquaintance of a friend” and that she heard about the supposed incident from that friend, who, in turn, learned about it from “a source that she had.” Newton added: “I don’t have any proof.” …
Lee, who described herself to NewsGuard as a Democrat who supports Donald Trump, told us that she was “shocked” to see Trump repeat the claim that she had made in a private Facebook group. “Honestly, it blew me away,” Lee said. “I didn’t think that any of this would explode to the presidency.” … As for how the story has shed a negative light on the thousands of Haitian migrants who have settled in Springfield, Lee said she was “just trying to inform people, you know, again, not saying Haitians as a whole [are] bad.”
A screenshot of Lee’s post with her name redacted was shared on X on September 5 and the story quickly went viral among conservatives until it was eventually promoted by J.D. Vance and Donald Trump.
“It just exploded into something I didn’t mean to happen,” Lee told NBC News, emphasizing her regret and fears since posting the message:
“I’m not a racist,” she said through heavy emotion, 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 pulled her daughter out of school and is now worried about her safety with so much attention on her family. She is also concerned for the safety of the Haitian community, which she said she did not intend to villainize en masse. “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.”
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