SPRINGFIELD, Ohio —The woman behind an early Facebook post spreading a harmful and baseless claim about Haitian immigrants eating local pets that helped thrust a small Ohio city into the national spotlight says she had no firsthand knowledge of any such incident and is now filled with regret and fear as a result of the ensuing fallout.

“It just exploded into something I didn’t mean to happen,” Erika Lee, a Springfield resident, told NBC News on Friday.

Lee recently posted on Facebook about a neighbor’s cat that went missing, adding that the neighbor told Lee she thought the cat was the victim of an attack by her Haitian neighbors.

  • Flying Squid
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    54 days ago

    Apart. I’m guessing, from the massive poos.

      • Flying Squid
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        24 days ago

        Yeah, but I assume your poos go in a toilet and not on the ground.

          • Flying Squid
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            24 days ago

            I’ll take your word for it. I clean up enough dog poo out there as it is. And it’s much smaller than cow poo. Generally not as soft too.

              • Flying Squid
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                14 days ago

                You’re really not convincing me to have a pet cow here…

                  • Flying Squid
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                    14 days ago

                    Having no garden, I’m not fertilizing it with anything’s poo.