Fake News: Obese Woman NOT Arrested For Starving Her 7 Kids

Fact Check

  • by: Maarten Schenk
Fake News: Obese Woman NOT Arrested For Starving Her 7 Kids

Was an obese woman arrested for starving her seven kids and did she say "there was only enough food for me"? Nope, that story was made up by a fake news website a few years ago but was recently recycled by another hoax website.

The latest copy of the article was published on March 23, 2018 by a relative new site viralkfc.com with the exact same title as the old one: "Obese Woman Arrested For Starving Her 7 Kids: "There Was Only Enough Food For Me"" (archived here). The story opened:

News 8 - A disturbing report is coming out of that Baton Rouge, Louisiana this morning that tells the story of 27-year-old Lakisha Connors who reportedly starved her children nearly to death. The 27-year-old mother of 7 was arrested on Thursday evening when neighbors called police and said they saw extremely unhealthy looking children digging through the trash cans on the side yard. When police arrived and knocked on the door, they were greeted by three-year-old Amonte Connors and five-year-old Dante Connors who let them into the home. Authorities say they found the Lakisha Connors passed out on the couch.

"The house was disgusting, probably the worst I've ever seen," said police chief Ronnie Hernandes. "When we enter the home, we found seven children who looked extremely malnourished. In addition to that there was a lock on the refrigerator and all nonperishable foods were locked in a huge wooden makeshift storage container in the mother's bedroom."

The story was already debunked three years ago by Snopes:

FALSE: Obese Woman Arrested for Starving Her 7 Kids

FACT CHECK: Was an obese woman arrested for starving her seven children in order to feed herself? Claim: An obese woman was arrested for starving her seven children in order to feed herself. FALSE Example: [Collected via Twitter, August 2015] A 27 year old mother of 7 nearly starved her kids to death...to keep the food all to herself...

The Snopes debunk mentioned the now seemingly inactive now8news.com fake news website as the original source of the story. It appears the website viralkfc.com (which was registered in October of last year) is working its way through a catalogue of old viral fake news stories. Only yesterday we noticed they were re-running an old hoax from Celebtricity and we noticed they were also running a rat-meat-as-chicken-wings hoax that we also saw on World News Daily Report two years ago.

Don't fall for it... again.

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  Maarten Schenk

Lead Stories co-founder Maarten Schenk is our resident expert on fake news and hoax websites. He likes to go beyond just debunking trending fake news stories and is endlessly fascinated by the dazzling variety of psychological and technical tricks used by the people and networks who intentionally spread made-up things on the internet.  He can often be found at conferences and events about fake news, disinformation and fact checking when he is not in his office in Belgium monitoring and tracking the latest fake article to go viral.

Read more about or contact Maarten Schenk

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