What was claimed
A pictured couple is on the run in England, following the fatal shooting of an 89-year-old woman.
Our verdict
False. Police forces in the areas where the couple were supposedly last seen say they are not investigating any such crime.
Posts shared in multiple UK-based Facebook community groups have falsely claimed that police are searching for “homicide suspects … on the run” following the fatal shooting of an 89-year-old woman.
One post published in a group for residents of Southport, Merseyside says: “Two homicide suspects are on the run after robbing and fatally shooting an 89 year old woman in southport
“The police need the public’s assistance in locating Kelly Rees 30 and her husband Ashlee Rees 28. Kelly worked as the victims caregiver. If anyone has information that can lead to their arrest please contact the police.
“Flood your feeds to help locate them and find justice for the victims family [sic].”
Other posts feature in Facebook community groups for Norwich in Norfolk, Luton in Bedfordshire, Wickford and Brightlingsea in Essex, Doncaster in South Yorkshire and Knottingley in West Yorkshire. These posts feature near-identical wording except for a change of location.
However, none of these posts are genuine. Police in Bedfordshire, Merseyside, Essex, South Yorkshire, West Yorkshire and Norfolk all confirmed to Full Fact that they did not have such a case under investigation.
We’ve written previously about other posts we’ve seen that falsely claim supposed murder suspects are on the loose, and earlier this year we found examples of a similar hoax post shared in at least 20 Facebook community groups.
We’ve also written before about similar posts falsely raising the alarm for elderly people, abandoned infants and injured dogs in Facebook groups.
Hoaxes can damage people’s trust in local community news, because groups can become overwhelmed with false information. As a result, genuine posts may be ignored or dismissed as false.
You can find out more by watching an episode of BBC One’s Rip Off Britain in which our investigation into the problem of hoax posts on Facebook is featured. Our guide also offers some tips on how to identify such hoaxes.
This article is part of our work fact checking potentially false pictures, videos and stories on Facebook. You can read more about this—and find out how to report Facebook content—here. For the purposes of that scheme, we’ve rated this claim as false because police forces in areas where the posts appear say they are not investigating any such crime.
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