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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      25 days ago

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

        • Flying Squid
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          25 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.