An Ohio woman whose arrest led to false and racist attacks on the Haitian migrant community in Springfield, Ohio was sentenced to jail after pleading guilty to killing and eating a cat.
Allexis T. Ferrell, 27, from Canton, Ohio pleaded guilty on Monday to cruelty to animals and was given the maximum prison sentence of 12 months in prison by Stark County Common Pleas Judge Frank G. Forchione.
“I can’t express the disappointment, shock, disgust that this crime has brought to me. I don’t know what could prompt anyone to want to eat a cat,” Judge Forchione said, according to Newsweek.
“You’ve embarrassed this county. You’ve embarrassed this nation. More importantly, you’ve embarrassed yourself,” he added. “To me, you present quite a danger to our community. This is repulsive to me, I mean, that anyone would do this to an animal. And an animal’s like a child. I don’t know if you understand that or not.”
Ferrell had initially pleaded not guilty, but a mental health assessment found that she is capable of understanding the court proceedings.
Ferrell was arrested in August next to the carcass of a cat after reportedly “smash[ing] the cat’s head with her foot” and began to eat it, prosecutors say. Officers who arrived in the scene found her with fur on her lips and blood on her hands and feet.
Police bodycam video of her arrest was circulated on social media after it was falsely labeled on YouTube as that of a Haitian woman in Springfield eating her neighbor’s cat.
The false claim was amplified by now Vice-President-elect JD Vance and repeated on stage by President-elect Donald Trump during the presidential debate with Kamala Harris.
“In Springfield, they’re eating the dogs. The people that came in, they’re eating the cats. They’re eating — they’re eating the pets of the people that live there,” he said.
Following the debate, there were a number of bomb threats in Springfield, that led to schools, hospitals and other local businesses being evacuated or going remote.
Canton, where Ferrell was arrested, is approximately 170 miles from Springfield and Ferrell is not Haitian. According to The Associated Press, Ferrell was born in Ohio and graduated from Canton McKinley High School in 2015.
