The social media user who posted one of the first allegations of Haitian migrants kidnapping and eating household pets in Springfield, Ohio said she regrets spreading unfounded claims that shot the small town into the national spotlight. “It just exploded into something I didn’t mean to happen,” Erika Lee, a Springfield resident, told NBC News on Friday. She told the outlet “I’m not a racist” before adding that her daughter is half Black and she herself is mixed race and a member of the LGBTQ community. In a since deleted Facebook post, Lee misstated that a neighbor’s cat that went missing was allegedly poached by Haitian neighbors. Her story and additional false claims from other social media users were found not to have any merit. Despite local police and city officials repeatedly saying there is no evidence to support the pet-eating rumors, Donald Trump and his running mate JD Vance have trumpeted the baseless allegations. On Thursday, anti-immigrant rhetoric conspiracies led to bomb threats being made “to multiple facilities throughout” in Springfield, reportedly lodged by an individual claiming to be a city resident frustrated by the influx of Haitian immigrants to the area in recent years.
