On a Sunday in late July, Gary, a pseudonym, was driving near Cleveland Avenue and Northwold Road on the North Side of Columbus when he spotted a man carrying what he believed to be a goose carcass. Struck by the scene, he stopped and took a photograph, which he later posted to the Ohio subreddit under the header “This Is Ohio.”
“I don’t know if you follow Reddit at all, but there was a thing going on where people would post ‘This Is Ohio,’ and [under that headline] some people would post pictures of a beach or farmland and other people would post crazier things,” said Gary, who didn’t think anything of the image at the time beyond its more surreal nature. “And it got a few comments then, but it was mostly people saying, ‘Oh, somebody’s going to eat good tonight.’”
Then on Monday, more than a month after first posting the photo, Gary said he received a call from an official with the Ohio Department of Natural Resources (ODNR), who informed him that the criminal complaint line had recently been inundated with callers claiming the photograph as proof that Haitian immigrants were killing and eating waterfowl in Springfield, Ohio. Thirty minutes later, he received a second call, this time from a reporter with The New York Times.
After hanging up the phone, Gary hopped on the computer and conducted a reverse image search, learning that in recent days his photograph had been picked up and shared by right wing sites such as InfoWars as “proof” that Haitian immigrants were catching and eating animals, including household pets – a deeply racist lie constructed and incubated in right wing internet circles and gradually spread to the mainstream.
Within hours, the image and associated story had been fact checked by Snopes (The headline: No Evidence Haitian Immigrants Are Eating Ducks, Geese or Pets in Springfield, Ohio), and in a Monday interview with ABC News, Gary said the reporter told him not to be surprised if his photograph turned up as part of a question in the presidential debate between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump scheduled for tonight (Tuesday, Sept. 10) and hosted by ABC News. “And I don’t know if they were just throwing it out there, like, ‘Hey, this photo is a big deal, maybe there will be a question,’ or if they actually knew,” he said. “But if it does end up being a question tonight, you heard it here first.”
Meanwhile, the Springfield Police Division said on Monday morning that there have been no reports of pets being stolen in the city, adding this was “not something that’s on our radar right now.”
And yet, the photo and associated lie have continued to be shared by right wing news organizations and scores of large accounts on X (formerly Twitter), some of which have followers numbering in the millions, each falsely claiming the image depicts a Haitian immigrant in Springfield who had killed a waterfowl intending to eat it.
“And not one of those people attempted to contact me. The people who actually are contacting me are those you would consider to be reputable news agencies, and they want the metadata, the location, the proof that I’d taken it,” Gary said. “And then you get the other side that was just like, ‘Hey, here’s a random picture of a Black guy. We can use that as a weapon.’ Like, the Daily Caller didn’t get a hold of me, right?”
The falsehoods being levied against Haitian immigrants in the state were further boosted by Ohio senator and current vice-presidential candidate JD Vance, who on Monday claimed in a post on X that “reports now show that people have had their pets abducted and eaten by” Haitian immigrants in Springfield. Vance backed off from the statement slightly today, writing, “It’s possible … that all of these rumors will turn out to be false.” (He then returned to the platform and doubled down, telling supporters to continue creating the racist memes being used by the right wing to stoke hatred.)
“JD Vance, he’s the junior senator from Ohio, right? Why is he lying about something that is going on in Ohio, trying to tear his state down and make it look bad?” Gary said. “Generally, you would think he’d want to build where he’s from up instead of making it sound like some hellhole as a way to further his political ambitions.”
In an attempt to push back against the falsehoods, Gary said he contacted Pixsy, an online site that works with photographers who have their images stolen. He’s also made multiple posts in various local subreddits in an attempt to spread the truth about the picture, even as he understands that much of the damage has already been done.
“Realistically, it’s like when a newspaper publishes a correction on page four when they printed something false above the fold on page one,” he said. “The people who believe this nonsense, nothing will change their minds. … I’ve even gotten a bunch of messages, like, ‘So, what you’re telling us is it’s not just Haitians and it’s not just one part of Ohio. It’s all over.’ … They’re commenting, like, ‘Thanks for confirming we have an even bigger immigration problem than we thought we had.’”
When he took the picture, Gary said he didn’t give any thought to the man’s race or ethnicity, and his assumption was that the goose had been hit and killed by a car on or near Cleveland Avenue. And even when he posted the image to Reddit, he thought it would garner at most a few chuckles or curious replies.
“It never dawned on me that this [photo] could be used as a weapon. I didn’t look at it as a racial thing or an immigration thing. It was just, ‘Hey, here’s this guy with a goose,’” said Gary, who described himself as “to the left of Nancy Pelosi politically” and shared that he has experienced a mix of anger, frustration and helplessness as his image has been used to advance a campaign of hate against immigrants. “I wish I never took it.”
