Fact check: False claim connects boy's bike crash to several US towns

Eleanor McCrary, USA TODAY
·4 min read
7

The claim: Photos show a boy hit by a car in various US towns

Multiple social media users are posting in local Facebook groups about a boy they say was hit by a car in their community on Sept. 4.

“Please help! This young man got hit by a car last night here in Weslaco, we couldn’t find any form of identification with him. Please help bump this post so that his friend’s (sic) or family may find him,” reads a Facebook post from Sept. 5 in a 24,000-member Weslaco, Texas, garage sale group. It also includes a photo of a boy in a hospital bed, accompanied by another photo of a bent and twisted bike on the ground.

The post was shared more than 50 times in two days.

It has been duplicated by multiple accounts, which each saying the boy was hit in a different community. One version of the claim asserting the crash happened in Oskaloosa, Iowa, accumulated 200 shares before it was deleted. Another gained popularity in Appomattox, Virginia.

The claims are false, though.

The photo of the boy in the hospital bed is of a young man who was hit by a car in Grimsby, England, three months ago. The accompanying photo of a bike is from an unrelated crash in Santa Rosa, California, in 2021.

Police in Appomattox, Oskaloosa and Weslaco told USA TODAY no such incident occurred in those cities on Sept 4.

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USA TODAY reached out to several users who shared the claim for comment.

Photos are from unrelated crashes

The photos in the post stem from a car-bike collision that took place in June in England and an unrelated California crash from June 2021.

A Grimsby resident, Sal Jenner, posted several photos of her son, Bailey, after he was involved in a collision with a car while riding his bike on June 8. She said the crash left him in a coma, but he was recovering.

Lydia Pickering, a spokeswoman for the Humberside Police Department, which has jurisdiction in Grimsby, said it responded to the crash involving Bailey Jenner. The department also referenced the crash in a Facebook post on June 9.

In a Grimsby Telegraph article about the incident, which was published June 13, journalists also spoke to Jenner's mother and referenced her Facebook post about the crash.

The photo of the mangled bike, which accompanied the one of Bailey, was not the one he was riding when the collision occurred. Instead, it was from a different crash that occurred in Santa Rosa, California, in 2021.

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Sgt. Christopher Mahurin of the Santa Rosa Police Department said the photo of the bike was from his agency. The department also provided the same photograph to local media in June of 2021.

Police departments in the three cities identified in various posts had no reports of recent car-bike crashes like that cited in the post, according to Officer Alan Carmichael of the Oskaloosa Police Department, Officer Miguel Martinez of the Weslaco Police Department and spokesperson Karen O'Brien with the Appomattox County Sherriff's Office.

Our rating: False

Based on our research, we rate FALSE the claim that photos show a boy hit by a car in various US towns. The photograph of the boy is from a collision in England three months ago, and the photograph of the bike is from an unrelated crash in Santa Rosa, California, in June 2021. Spokespeople from police departments in Weslaco, Oskaloosa and Appomattox said there was no incident that matched the description on Sept. 4.

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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Fact check: False claim connects boy's bike crash to several US towns