What was claimed
An 18-year-old babysitter and her boyfriend are on the run in March 2025 after murdering a 1 year old in Prestbury, Cheshire.
Our verdict
False. Cheshire Constabulary has said no one is being sought as no such incident has occurred.
Hoax post claims couple is on the run in Prestbury after killing a child
A Facebook post claiming a couple is “on the run after murdering a 1 year old in Prestbury” is a hoax.
The post, which was shared to the community group ‘Prestbury Buy & Sell Page’ on 31 March, says: “18-year-old babysitter and her boyfriend ON THE RUN after murdering a 1 year old in prestbury
“18-year-old JOSYLEEN ROGERS and her boyfriend 29-year old ERIC BARNES have been identified as murder suspects responsible for the death of a baby JOSYLEEN was entrusted to look after 1 year old Emma Smith. The parents came back to find their baby's lifeless body in their home on the 31st of March and the baby sitter is evading capture.The babys death was as a result of penetrating, blunt, and deceleration trauma.The police are seeking the publics assistance to find them and put them behind bars [sic]”. People are then encouraged to share the post in order to “help find these two”.
Mugshot-style photographs of a man and a woman accompany the post. Cheshire Constabulary confirmed to Full Fact that the images did not match the custody photos issued by the force, and that the claim was not true.
We’ve also seen an almost identical post in a Facebook community group for Formby, Merseyside, as well as another which has Salt Lake City, Utah as the location of the incident. Neither Merseyside Police nor the authorities in Salt Lake City have issued any such alert on their official channels.
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 hoax posts like this shared in at least 20 Facebook community groups.
We’ve also written before about similar posts falsely raising the alarm for missing children, elderly people, abandoned infants and injured dogs in Facebook community 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, which features our investigation into the problem of hoax posts on Facebook. 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 Cheshire Constabulary has said it is not true.