Fact Check: Child's Snakebite Was NOT Recent -- It Was 2 Years Ago And He Survived

Fact Check

  • by: Kaiyah Clarke
Fact Check: Child's Snakebite Was NOT Recent -- It Was 2 Years Ago And He Survived Old News

Did a "rattle head" snake bite a child in the summer of 2021? No, that's not true: This claim is missing context, as the photo with a post seeking prayers is from a 2019 news account of a 2-year-old South Carolina child who was bitten by a copperhead and survived after hospital treatment.

The claim appeared in a Facebook post (archived here) published on August 4, 2021. It featured a photo of a hospitalized toddler's swollen and discolored leg with ink markings on it. The text above this photo reads:

πŸ™ŒπŸ™ŒπŸ™Œ This child was bitten by a rattle head snake please pray for his full recovery..don't ignore could've be ur child as well πŸ™ŒπŸ™ŒπŸ™Œ

This is what the post looked like on Facebook on August 5, 2021:

Facebook screenshot

(Source: Facebook screenshot taken on Thu Aug 5 20:34:33 2021 UTC)

The post seeking prayers uses a photo that originally appeared in an article published on October 8, 2019, by WYFF Greenville, a local news station in South Carolina, about a snakebite case in the state. The article quoted the father of the 2-year-old as saying he was bitten by a juvenile copperhead snake in the family's front yard -- not as the post says -- a "rattle head" snake, an apparent reference to a rattlesnake.

According to the article, the child was treated at a hospital with anti-venom medication to counteract the snake's venom.

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  Kaiyah Clarke

Kaiyah Clarke is a fact-checker at Lead Stories. She is a graduate of Florida A&M University with a B.S. in Broadcast Journalism and is currently pursuing an M.S. in Journalism. When she is not fact-checking or researching counter-narratives in society, she is often found reading a book on the New York Times Bestseller List.

Read more about or contact Kaiyah Clarke

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