Fake News: Battle Creek Woman NOT Arrested For Stinking Up Toilet And Closing Down Restaurant

Fact Check

  • by: Maarten Schenk
Fake News: Battle Creek Woman NOT Arrested For Stinking Up Toilet And Closing Down Restaurant

Was a woman in Battle Creek, Michigan arrested for stinking up the toilet of a restaurant so badly it had to be closed down? No, that's not true: a fake news website imitating Fox News' logo and domain name copied a hoax story originally published in 2015 and changed the location a bit. It is not real.

The story reappeared in an article published on the website foxnews-us.com (not foxnews.com) on August 19, 2018 titled "Battle Creek Woman Arrested For Stinking Up Toilet And Closing Down Restaurant" (archived here) which opened:

BATTLE CREEK, MI - Police and fire-paramedics were called to a restaurant when it had to close its doors early on Friday evening after a woman spent 45 minutes in the bathroom causing 'unbearable, inhuman stench'.

The 34-year-old woman kicked open the restaurant doors, shouting "out of the way, I'm prairie-dogging!" and ran through the dining area, which was at capacity.

"We were so crowded, people were waiting up to two hours for a table," says the hostess. "In comes this crazy woman, already smelling like she dumped in her pants, running towards the bathroom."

Compare that to this 2015 story from The Valley Report:

Woman arrested for stinking up bathroom and closing down restaurant

DAVE WEASEL CEDAR RAPIDS, IA - Police and fire-paramedics were called to a restaurant when it had to close its doors early on Tuesday evening after a woman spent 45 minutes in the bathroom causing 'unbearable, inhuman stench'. The 34 year old woman kicked open the restaurant doors, shouting "out of the way, I'm prairie-dogging!"

That site had a disclaimer page which simply read:

2 000 000 hits per month and all of these stories are fake. Don't be stupid.

We wrote about foxnews-us.com before, here are our most recent articles that mention the site:

Want to inform others about the accuracy of this story?

See who is sharing it (it might even be your friends...) and leave the link in the comments.:


  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

About Us

International Fact-Checking Organization Meta Third-Party Fact Checker

Lead Stories is a fact checking website that is always looking for the latest false, misleading, deceptive or inaccurate stories, videos or images going viral on the internet.
Spotted something? Let us know!.

Lead Stories is a:


@leadstories

Subscribe to our newsletter

* indicates required

Please select all the ways you would like to hear from Lead Stories LLC:

You can unsubscribe at any time by clicking the link in the footer of our emails. For information about our privacy practices, please visit our website.

We use Mailchimp as our marketing platform. By clicking below to subscribe, you acknowledge that your information will be transferred to Mailchimp for processing. Learn more about Mailchimp's privacy practices here.

Most Read

Most Recent

Share your opinion