Fact check: Image of hospitalized girl is from a 2021 car crash in Australia, not recent crash

BrieAnna J. Frank, USA TODAY
·3 min read

The claim: Image shows young girl hurt in hit-and-run in locations around the world

Social media users around the world are sharing the same images of a young girl who they claim is an unidentified victim of a hit-and-run crash.

“We Need Your Help To Identify this little girl who was riding her bike and got involved in a Hit & run (sic) few hours ago in #Riverton,” reads a Dec. 5 Facebook post (direct link, archived link) that was shared more than 100 times in four days. “The Deputies are not Able to identify Her, because she has No ID with Her. The suspect is currently on the run & the girl is still unconscious in Hospital. Please bump Post so that Family can see (sic).”

The Dec. 5 post appears to be referencing Riverton, Utah, as it was posted in a Facebook group for that area.

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Other versions of the post placed the girl in various locations in the U.S. and around the world and garnered hundreds of additional shares.

But the Riverton Police Department and other local authorities said no such thing happened in their respective areas. One photo shows a girl who was injured in a car crash in Australia in 2021. A misinformation expert previously told USA TODAY such posts are made by scammers to help them identify potential targets.

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

Image shows girl injured in 2021 crash in Australia

Riverton police told USA TODAY the claim is false.

"We have no records of this case," Cmdr. Shane Taylor said in an email to USA TODAY. "After further research, this post is not legitimate for adjacent agencies or us."

Law enforcement agencies in various other places where the claim circulated also debunked it in social media posts.

One of the images in the posts matches a photo included in a March 2021 report by Daily Mail Australia about a 4-year-old girl who was hospitalized after a car crash near Brisbane. The girl’s mother and grandmother were killed in the head-on collision, the outlet reported.

Fact check: Various reports of missing girl are hoaxes, mislead communities

Jeffrey Blevins, a professor of journalism and public and international affairs at the University of Cincinnati, previously told USA TODAY that scammers use copy-and-paste posts like these as “gullibility checks” to identify potential targets.

“They’re likely to circle back to you later to see what you’re willing to share, or they might try to engage you one-on-one, get you to accept a friend request, that kind of thing,” Blevins said.

USA TODAY has debunked numerous versions of the copy-and-paste scams.

Our rating: False

Based on our research, we rate FALSE the claim an image shows a young girl hurt in a hit-and-run in locations around the world. Several law enforcement agencies said the claim was false and that no such incident happened in their respective jurisdictions. The image actually shows a young girl injured in a fatal car crash in Australia in 2021. A misinformation expert previously told USA TODAY copy-and-paste posts like these are used by scammers to identify potential targets.

Our fact-check sources:

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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Fact check: Image of hospitalized hit-and-run victim is part of a scam