SPRINGFIELD, Ohio — The woman behind an early Facebook post that spread the hurtful and baseless claim that Haitian immigrants were eating local pets and helped put a small Ohio town on national radar says she had no firsthand knowledge of such an incident. and is now full of regret and fear because of the resulting consequences.

“It just exploded into something I didn’t intend,” says Erika Lee, a Springfield resident. NBC News said on Friday.

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

Newsguard, a media watchdog that monitors online misinformation, found that Lee was among the first people to post on social media about the rumor, screenshots of which were circulating online. Neighbor Kimberly Newton said she learned of the attack from a third party, NewsGuard reported.

Newton told Newsguard that Lee’s Facebook post misrepresented her story and that the owner of the missing cat was “an acquaintance of a friend” and not her daughter’s friend. Newton could not be reached for comment.

Lee said she had no idea the post would become part of a rumor mill that would reach the national consciousness. She has since deleted the Facebook post.

Other posts have also contributed to the false accusations, including a photo of a man holding a dead goose. The photo was taken in Columbus, Ohio, but has been shared by some online as evidence to support the Springfield claims. Also, a video of a woman allegedly killing a cat and trying to eat it was not from Springfield, but from Canton, Ohio, and has no connection to the Haitian community.

Local police and city officials have repeatedly said there is no evidence of such crimes in Springfield. But that hasn’t stopped the lies from spreading across the country, sparking a national furor that reached the presidential debate stage this week. Former President Donald Trump and his running mate, Ohio Senator JD Vance, who was born less than an hour from Springfield, have repeated the baseless allegations.

Lee said she never imagined her post would become fodder for conspiracy theories and hate.

“I’m not a racist,” she said with great emotion, adding that her daughter is half black and she herself is biracial and a member of the LGBTQ community. “Everyone seems to portray it that way, and that was not my intention.”

Anti-immigrant sentiment in Springfield led to the closure of schools and municipal buildings on Thursday and Friday after the city government received bomb threats.

Lee said she has pulled her daughter out of school and is now worried about her safety because her family is attracting so much attention. She is also concerned about the safety of the Haitian community, who she does not want to portray as a villain en masse.

“I feel for the Haitian community,” she said. “If I were in the Haitians’ shoes, I would be terrified too. I would be terrified that someone would come after me because they think I’m hurting something they love, and that, like I said, is not what I was trying to do.”

Immigrant advocacy groups warn that such claims can be dangerous.

“The Haitian American community in Springfield, Ohio and across the country feels attacked and unsafe because dehumanizing, debunked and racist conspiracies are being pushed and still repeated at the highest levels of American politics,” Vanessa Cárdenas, executive director of America’s Voice, a nonprofit that advocates for immigration reform, said in an email. “The false claim that Black immigrants are violently attacking American families by stealing and eating their pets is a powerful and old racist stereotype that makes people targets, and it is only amplified in the era of MAGA, where political violence has become commonplace and we have already witnessed violent incidents incited by such rhetoric.”

Lee said there are very real problems related to Springfield’s population boom, which has taken the struggling city completely by surprise. Springfield was unprepared to meet the housing, health care and other services needs that came with the sudden surge in new population over the past five years as Haitians arrived, many of whom have protected status under federal law.

Yet she never imagined that her Facebook post would make national headlines.

“I didn’t think it would ever get beyond Springfield,” she said.