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.
I’ll take your word for it. I clean up enough dog poo out there as it is. And it’s much smaller than cow poo. Generally not as soft too.
Cow poo is good fertilizer though. You’d have a beautiful garden.
You’re really not convincing me to have a pet cow here…
I wouldn’t recommend fertilizing your garden with your own poo!!
Having no garden, I’m not fertilizing it with anything’s poo.
I think you would love a garden.
I think I have a black thumb.
… where are you putting your thumb?