Chilling pic as ‘cat-eating’ claim turns violent

A CCTV image has laid bare the brutal impact a ‘cat-eating’ conspiracy is having on immigrants living in the US town at the centre of the rumour.

Haitian immigrants living in the small US town at the centre of the cat-eating conspiracy say they are too afraid to send their kids to school and are being subjected to racist attacks.

One woman, who moved to Springfield, Ohio, six years ago, said she woke up one morning to find thugs had smashed her car windows and thrown acid over it.

She installed security cameras to her driveway but claimed her vehicles had still been vandalised twice in the middle of the night.

“I’m going to have to move because this area is no longer good for me,” she told the Haitian Times. “I can’t even leave my house to go to Walmart. I’m anxious and scared.”

Another woman, who also spoke to the publication under anonymity but is a community leader, said terrified families had been ringing her all week fearing for their safety.

“People are very afraid for their lives,” she said.

“Many families are starting to think of leaving Springfield after last night and some kids aren’t even going to school because of fear of being attacked.”

A Haitian woman living in Springfield, Ohio, says strangers have thrown acid on her car in the wake of the ‘cat-eating’ conspiracy. She has installed CCTV in her driveway (above) but is still being targeted. Picture: Haitian Times

Springfield found itself in headlines this week after Donald Trump repeated unsubstantiated claims during the presidential debate that Haitian immigrants were “eating cats and dogs” in the town.

Trump doubled down on the rhetoric during a campaign rally in Tucson, Arizona on Thursday, saying that “migrants are walking off with the town’s geese.”

Springfield authorities have repeatedly said there are no credible reports of pets being harmed by members of the immigrant community.

On Thursday, Springfield police said that City Hall and several other government buildings had been evacuated after a bomb threat sent by email at 8.24am.

“Authorities investigated and cleared all facilities listed in the threat with the assistance of explosive detecting canines,” the force said in a statement.

Fulton Elementary School and Springfield Academy of Excellence were also listed in the threat and evacuated, according to the statement.

“We are currently partnering with the Dayton office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation to identify the source of the email,” it added.

One Haitian father who turned up to school to pick up his child said the current tensions in the community were “worrying”.

“I’m a little stressed. I think something might happen,” he told AFP.

A sign in English, Spanish and Haitian Creole informed parents that the students had been moved to a high school.

Springfield’s City Hall and several other government buildings and schools were evacuated over a bomb threat on Thursday. Picture: Roberto Schmidt / AFP

Mayor Rob Rue told the Springfield News-Sun that the person who sent the bomb threat claimed to be from the city and mentioned Haitian immigration issues.

Despite the bomb threats, Trump was still reposting memes related to the conspiracy theory hours later on his Truth Social platform.

He claimed Ohio was being “inundated with illegal migrants, mostly from Haiti, who are taking over Towns and Villages at a level and rate never seen before.”

Springfield, with a population of about 58,000, has seen an increase of 15,000 Haitian immigrants in recent years.

Social services, schools and housing have been stressed in the city for years, with some pointing to migration as a factor.

Ohio Governor Mike DeWine - a Republican like Trump - said the surge of Haitian immigrants to Springfield was a “dramatic change”.

He said they were there under Temporary Protected Status (TPS), which allows foreign nationals to live and work in the United States.

“Why did they come? They came for jobs,” DeWine told Fox News reporters on Thursday.

“There’s nothing wrong with us being welcoming.”

Pop star John Legend had a powerful message for those in his hometown of Springfield. Picture: Jamie McCarthy / Getty Images via AFP

John Legend’s surprising link to Springfield

Meanwhile, pop star John Legend, who was born and raised in Springfield, urged those in his hometown to embrace the many “challenges” of a huge “influx of Haitian immigrants”.

“You may have heard of Springfield, Ohio, this week,” Legend, 45, said in a lengthy Instagram video on Thursday.

“Nobody’s eating cats. Nobody’s eating dogs,” the two-time Emmy Award-winning singer insisted.

“How about we love another?” he asked, calling himself by his real name, “John R. Stevens from Springfield.”

“We didn’t have enough opportunity, so people left and went somewhere else,” said Legend, who changed his Instagram handle to show he was from Springfield despite moving away years ago.

“When I was there, we had upwards of 75,000 people, and in the last five years, we were down to like 60,000 people,” he said.

The Haitians who “came to our country legally” helped fill those jobs, he said - while acknowledging the “challenges” of newly arrived migrants marking a “25% increase” in his hometown’s population

Those “growing pains” for Springfield included an influx of people with “new language, new culture” - and “new dietary preferences,” Legend said.

“So there are plenty of reasons why this might be a challenge for my hometown,” he added, likening it to immigrants who for decades have come chasing “the American dream.”

“I think all of us need to have the same kind of grace that we would want [for] our ancestors” with “our Haitian brothers and sisters.”

This photo of an unknown man holding a goose in Columbus, 45 minutes from Springfield, has been seized by right-wing X users. Springfield authorities say there’s no evidence of Haitian migrants eating cats, dogs or geese. Picture: Reddit

Legend also presented his followers with “some facts about immigrants.”

“They usually do very well here,” Legend said.

“They are hard-working. They are ambitious. They commit less crime than native-born Americans, and they will assimilate and integrate in time, but it takes time.”

Springfield mayor rubbishes cat-eating claims

In an interview with NewsNation, the mayor of Springfield, Rob Rue, shot down the claims the former president made about Haitian migrants in his city.

“Springfield is still beautiful and your pets are safe in Springfield, Ohio, safe,” Mr Rue said..

“So what this is, what this has done is created a negative light, obviously, that we did not look for, we did not ask for these.”

Mr Rue shared that the city had no control over the migrants coming, but that rumours of their bizarre behavior are “frustrating.”

“These claims are, they were just untrue. And we may mention that there we’ve just don’t see reports of those. There’s a lot of frenzy on the internet, but this is not what we’re seeing. It’s a bit frustrating.”

Donald Trump repeated unsubstantiated claims Haitians are eating cats and dogs in Springfield during the presidential debate. Picture: Hannah Beier/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Viral post on community Facebook group

The claim that Haitian migrants in Springfield are eating pets originated from a social media post first shared on a local community Facebook group.

“My neighbour informed me that her daughter’s friend had lost her cat,” the post said.

“She checked pages, kennels, asked around. One day she came home from work. As soon as she stepped out of her car, looked towards a neighbour’s house, where Haitians live, and saw her cat hanging from a branch, like you’d do (to) a deer for butchering.

“They were carving it up to eat. I’ve been told they are doing this to dogs, they have been doing it at the park with ducks and geese.

Springfield Police told the News-Sun they were aware of the social media post, but said it’s “not something that’s on our radar right now.”

Another local made a similar claim during a City Commission meeting on August 27.

“They’re in the park grabbing up ducks by their necks and cutting their heads off and eating them,” the 28-year-old claimed without evidence.

Earlier this week, conservative outlet the Federalist shared audio of a call made to a police from a man who claimed to have seen a group of Haitian migrants carrying four geese in Springfield.

“I’m sitting here, I’m riding on the trail, I’m going to my orientation for my job today, and I see a group of Haitian people, there was about four of them, they all had geese in their hand,” the caller told a dispatcher.

He said the group — two men and two women — were each clutching one of the birds when they took off in a gray Toyota Tacoma truck.

The caller gave a portion of their license plate he was able to make out.

Clark County officials said they had been unable to substantiate the man’s claims.

A photo does exist of a man carrying a goose by its neck, but it was taken 45 minutes from Springfield in Columbus.

The man who took the photo said he was outraged that “right-wingers … will take a random picture from the internet and use it as a weapon to further their agenda”.

“I wish I never took it, for sure. And I hate that the picture that I took is being weaponised to use against immigrants, or really, any other group,” he told the Columbus Dispatcher.

A woman in Canton, 275kms from Springfield, was arrested after allegedly killing and eating a cat. She is an Ohio resident - not a Haitian immigrant. Picture: X

‘She was eating it’: Disturbing viral arrest video

Chilling footage of a woman being arrested after allegedly killing and eating a cat was also seized by conspiracists – despite it taking place in Canton, 275 kilometres from Springfield.

The woman in the arrest video, Allexis Telia Ferrell, was born in America – not Haiti.

“The suspect in this case is not a Haitian immigrant,” Ohio police spokesman Dennis Garren said, according to Reuters.

“She is a life long Canton resident.”

In the police bodycam clip, a police officer can be heard asking the woman “why did you eat the cat?”

“Did you eat that cat? Did you eat it? Why did you kill it?,” he continues.

A witness at the scene outside a housing development in Stark County tells police “we pulled up, and she was just laying there with it … she was eating it”.

‘Officers were able to determine that Allexis had smashed the cat’s head with her foot and then began to eat the cat,’ police wrote in their report.

Ferrell was charged with animal cruelty, including harming animals, violating laws pertaining to companion animals, and disorderly behaviour over the August 16 rampage.

She is still before the courts.