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Former President Donald Trump and his campaign are accusing Haitians of eating cats and other pets in Springfield, Ohio , a Midwestern city currently experiencing an influx of Haitian immigrants and being dragged into the U.S. presidential campaign.
In fact, somebody is unfortunately accused of eating a cat in Ohio — but it’s a woman who police say is a long-time resident and the incident occurred in another town two hours away.
The unfounded accusations at Haitian newcomers has spread on social media, with even Elon Musk, the Tesla titan who took over Twitter and renamed it X, promoting the bogus claim. On Tuesday, Trump, in his first presidential debate with Vice President Kamala Harris, once again promoted the falsehood as an attack on the Biden administration’s immigration policies.
“In Springfield, they’re eating the dogs — the people that came in. They’re eating the cats. They’re eating the pets of the people that live there. And this is what’s happening in our country, and it’s a shame,” Trump said.
Trump’s vice president running mate, U.S. Sen. JD Vance, had appeared to be backtracking from the unsubstantiated rumor earlier in the day on Tuesday when he said on X, “It’s possible of course, that all of these rumors will turn out to be false.”
But following Trump’s comment during the debate in Philadelphia, Vance doubled-down on the claim when asked by NBC News Washington Correspondent Yamiche Alcindor what is his message to Haitian Americans and Haitian immigrants who say the false claim is putting their lives at risk?
“The city manager said there is no verifiable evidence. A lot of residents on the ground said there is. That just means the city manager isn’t fully in touch with what’s going on in the ground there,” Vance said. “I’ve heard from many of my own constituents who have seen these things with their own eyes, who’ve seen these abductions with their own eyes.”
So far, the campaign has provided no names or verifiable reports involving Haitians. There is a cat-eating case in the city of Canton in Stark County but not in Springfield, Ohio, which is two hours away in Clark County. Vance, a junior senator, visited East Canton back in 2022 as part of a six-city, two day campaign tour for the U.S. Senate.
In August, a 27-year-old Canton, Ohio resident, Allexis Telia Ferrell, was arrested for allegedly killing a cat and eating it, according to a copy of the police report, police body camera videos and recordings of the 911 calls shared with the Miami Herald by the Canton Police Department. The 911 calls raised questions if she was suffering from drug or mental health problems.
There were four officers who responded to the scene on Aug. 16 in the 1100 block of 13th Street Southeast in Canton, which is a public housing complex. Body camera video shows Ferrell, who barely responds to police, on her knees in the parking lot with the cat carcass in front of her. She was charged with prohibitions concerning companion animals, cruelty to animals and disorderly conduct.
“The Defendant did torture, kill, and eat a cat in a residential area in front multiple people,” the police report said.
Court records show that Ferrell had an initial bond of $100,000 and she has an upcoming court appearance on Oct. 15. Records also show that Ferrell had previous run-ins with the law including for theft and child endangerment.
Body cam footage of Ferrell’s arrest, shared by the Canton Police Department, and the 911 calls, all alleged that she killed and ate the cat. There is no reference to her being Haitian or an immigrant.
“We have no reason to believe that she is not a U.S. citizen. She has lived in Canton for quite some time; for sure since she was a juvenile,” Canton Police Department spokesman Lt. Dennis Garren told the Herald.
A video posted on Youtube by an outlet called the “Fake News Network” falsely claims otherwise. The video is titled “Haitian Woman Eats Neighbor’s Cat in Springfield Ohio.” A snippet of the longer 50 minute police bodycam video shared with the Herald, the Fake News Network video shows police asking a handcuffed Ferrell, “What did you do, why did you kill the cat?”
After asking Ferrell to smile and snapping a photo, a police officer asks, “Did you eat that cat?” Off camera, two females are heard confirming to police that she ate it.
In the 911 calls shared with the Herald, three different callers requested help for Ferrell. In one, a cousin of Ferrell’s said she had been watching a live video of the woman on Facebook and “she had killed a cat, eating it.”
“I don’t know what kind of drugs she’s on,” the cousin told the 911 operator before identifying Ferrell by name and confirming she was in Canton, Ohio. “She ate a spider off the wall, and now a cat.”
In another call, a woman asked for an ambulance to be sent to the location, which a third caller later identified as the Jackson Sherrick Homes public housing complex. The caller then says, “she done pulled the head off a cat.”
The 911 operator then responded that police were already on the way. Asked why they weren’t sending a medic, the operator said, “because she was eating a cat. We send police for something like that. It’s more of a mental health issue. It’s a criminal issue too for animal cruelty.”
On Wednesday, Haiti’s Ministry for Haitians Living Abroad issued a communique that says Foreign Minister Dominique Dupuy and an adviser of Prime Minister Garry Conille met virtually with more than 50 Haitian leaders in the Springfield area to show their support and determine strategies going forward to help the community address the attacks.
“This is not the first time that we have been victims of disinformation campaigns, stigmatized and dehumanized to serve political interests,” Dupuy later posted. “Once again, it is up to us, Haitians, to stand up and proclaim, together and in one voice, our humanity.”
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