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Ciara O'Rourke
By Ciara O'Rourke April 30, 2024

No, these photos don’t show an unidentified woman left for dead, as social media posts claim

If Your Time is short

  • These posts aren’t authentic. The photos used in them were taken from unrelated news stories.

Dozens of Facebook posts are drawing attention as accounts urge people to help identify "a young woman who was involved in a hit and run incident, and left for dead by the side of the road."

Which road? Depends which post you’re looking at. 

One post, from April 29, says "Fulton Co." Another says "Fort Worth." A third says "Beaumont," a fourth says "Kingston, NY," and so on. By May 1, these posts had been deleted, but more have popped up claiming the woman was left on a road in "Suwanee" and "Holland."

But they all use the same photos, including one of a woman in a hospital bed, and claim she "is currently in a coma" and that "deputies are unable to identify her because she is missing her ID."

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These posts were flagged as part of Meta’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram.)

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Two of the post’s photos came from a December 2023 news story about an Abilene, Texas, woman who was "hit by a car while she was crossing the street with her little girl and dog," a CBS News affiliate reported. The woman was hospitalized with injuries that "did not appear to be life-threatening," and the girl and dog were uninjured.

The photo of a woman in a hospital bed, meanwhile, was taken from an August 2023 news story about Erin Stevenson, who was injured while playing with her dog in Chicago. Her dog headbutted her, The Mirror U.S. reported, and she was put on life support for several days but survived. 

We rate posts claiming these photos show an unidentified woman and the scene of her hit-and-run False.

 

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No, these photos don’t show an unidentified woman left for dead, as social media posts claim

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