The Clark County dog warden has refuted viral pet-eating allegations in Springfield, Ohio, after Donald Trump regurgitated unfounded claims that the city’s pets were being poached by Haitian immigrants on Tuesday.
“Nobody has any proof of anything,” Sandi Click told the Daily Beast. “It’s all just a bunch of hearsay.”
Click, who is responsible for animal welfare investigations, rescues, and enforcement in Springfield, said that, although she has received calls about alleged animal cruelty, these tips are all “third or fourth hand information without any pictures.”
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“We spend the time trying to debunk these rumors, and it takes away from the time we need to spend caring for the animals and investigating legitimate complaints,” the warden added, chalking up some of the buzz to people “needing something to talk about.”
The Springfield Police Department has also fielded similar complaints, and, according to Officer Matthew Hogan “there has been no found evidence of the claims being true.”
Prior to the Sep. 10 presidential debate, city officials dismissed theories about immigrants brutalizing animals saying there are “no credible reports or specific claims of pets being harmed, injured or abused.” Despite Springfield’s statement, Trump still claimed, “They’re eating the dogs. The people that came in, they’re eating the cats,” proof of which he said came from “the people on television.”
Rumors about the Ohio town’s animals being under siege appear to have originated from a series of social media posts, particularly on Facebook, where one user posted that a cat belonging to a friend of a neighbor’s daughter had been found hanging from a tree.
Right-wing commentators and Trump allies then piggybacked on the conspiracy theories, with the likes of Ted Cruz, Elon Musk, and Donald Trump Jr. circulating AI generated animal memes depicting the former president as the savior of Ohio’s household pets.
“People should listen more carefully when they hear something and not jump to conclusions, because not everything on social media is true,” Click said, expressing disappointment that the online frenzy has taken over the Ohio city.
“Nobody focuses on the myriad of issues that we need to work together as a community to overcome,” she continued.
Springfield, which has welcomed up to 20,000 immigrants, many from Haiti in the past several years, has become a central landmark of the U.S. immigration divide as the city grapples with its expanding population.
The contention has grown after the tragic death of 11-year old Aiden Clark– who was killed in a bus crash involving a Haitian migrant–with political leaders like GOP vice presidential pick JD Vance alleging that “Haitian illegal immigrants” in Springfield are “draining social services and generally causing chaos,” and using Clark’s death to substantiate such claims.
