US election: Springfield woman who circulated allegations against animal eaters says she is 'not a racist' | World news

A woman who posted on Facebook about Haitian immigrants eating local pets said she now deeply regrets it after the incident escalated into a nationwide uproar.

Erika Lee, a resident of Springfield, Ohio, posted an article online about the disappearance of a neighbor's cat and said she was told the cat was the victim of an attack by her Haitian neighbors.

According to NewsGuard, a media watchdog that monitors misinformation, she was one of the first people to post the rumor online.

Ms Lee's post sparked a rumor mill that went into overdrive, with the baseless claims repeated by presidential candidate Donald Trump during a debate with Kamala Harris and by his running mate JD Vance on other occasions.

“It just exploded into something I didn't intend,” Ms Lee told Sky's partner NBC News.

“I am not racist,” she said, adding that she and her daughter are of diverse ethnic backgrounds and that she is a member of the LGBTQ community.

“Everyone seems to portray it that way, but that was not my intention.”

The neighbor Ms Lee quoted in her post, Kimberley Newton, told NewsGuard that her story was misrepresented in the post.

Read more: Inside Springfield – where dogs seem safe and cats roam free

Schools closed due to bomb threats

Other posts contributing to the false accusations included a photo of a man holding a dead goose. The photo was taken in Columbus, Ohio, but was circulated by some online as evidence to support the Springfield claims. A woman who allegedly actually killed a cat and tried to eat it was from Canton, Ohio, and had no ties to the Haitian community.

Local police and city officials have repeatedly stated that there is no evidence that pets are being eaten in Springfield, but allegations continue to circulate across the country.

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In Springfield, schools were closed due to bomb threats against immigrants.

Ms Lee said she never imagined her post would become fodder for conspiracy theories and hate. She said there were real problems in the city, which was surprised by a population boom as increasing numbers of migrants arrived.

“I didn't think it would ever go beyond Springfield,” she said, adding that she had taken her daughter out of school out of concern for her safety.

Read more:
Where do Trump's claims that he eats pets come from?
How the rumor spread on the Internet

And immigrant advocacy groups point out that such claims can be dangerous.

“The Haitian-American community in Springfield, Ohio, and across the country feels attacked and unsafe because dehumanizing, debunked and racist conspiracies are being pushed and still repeated at the highest levels of American politics,” Vanessa Cárdenas, executive director of America's Voice, a nonprofit that advocates for immigration reform, told NBC News.

“The false claim that black immigrants violently attack American families by stealing and eating their pets is a powerful and old racist stereotype that targets people, and it is only amplified in the era of MAGA. [the make America great again slogan used by Donald Trump] at a time when political violence has become commonplace and we have already witnessed violent incidents instigated by such rhetoric.”