Fact Check: Girl In Princess Dress Helping An Injured Biker Is NOT Real -- There's No 'Ashford' On Route 27 And The Picture Is AI-Generated

Fact Check

  • by: Sarah Thompson
Fact Check: Girl In Princess Dress Helping An Injured Biker Is NOT Real -- There's No 'Ashford' On Route 27 And The Picture Is AI-Generated Fake Story

Did a little girl in a princess dress help Jonas "Grizzly" Keller, an injured biker who was liying in a ditch along "Route 27 near Ashford"? No, that's not true. This is a fake story illustrated with an AI-generated image. US Route 27 runs through six states from Florida to Indiana, and none of those states has a town named Ashford. There is no record of a man by that name, and the image accompanying the story features a malformed hand, a common flaw in AI-generated images.

The story appears in an article (archived here) published by flarumtr.com under the title "Bravery in a Princess Dress: Little Girl Helps Injured Stranger". It opened:

On a late autumn afternoon along Route 27 near Ashford, traffic moved as usual until a five-year-old girl in a sparkling princess dress screamed for her mother to stop the car. Her name was Sophie Maren, a child with tangled blonde hair, light-up sneakers, and a determination far larger than her size. From the backseat she fought against her seatbelt, crying that "the motorcycle man" was hurt.

This is the picture included in the article's social media card:

princess.jpg

(Image Source: Screenshot from @thedailymatter post on Facebook)

The article continued:

At first, her mother Helen thought she was overtired, yet Sophie insisted she saw a bearded man in a leather jacket bleeding below the ridge. Reluctantly, Helen pulled over, and before the car stopped Sophie bolted out, her dress hem flying, and ran toward the grassy slope. To Helen's shock, sprawled beside a twisted Harley forty feet below lay Jonas "Grizzly" Keller, a biker fighting for his life.

This clickbait story was published on Facebook (archived here) on Sept. 1, 2025 by the page @thedailymatter. The first comment under the post contains a link to flarumtr.com.

The story says that the little girl, Sophie Maren, is a 5-year-old, but the child in the image looks to be only a 2-year-old. Her right hand, touching the leg of the biker, is strange. Five fingers are visible- but the thumb is either on the wrong side of the hand or it is out of sight - implying that she has six fingers. This type of error in rendering fingers is a flaw frequently found in AI-generated images.

hand.jpg

(Image Source: Screenshot detail from @thedailymatter post on Facebook)

This same narrative appears in a post (archived here) on another Facebook page, Eva Whispers. The post links to a similar article on a different website, pilgrimjournalist.com (archived here). This time the story has a different AI-generated image (pictured below) which carries a disclaimer, "For Illustrative Purposes Only".

evawhispersii.jpg

(Image Source: Lead Stories screenshot from Eva Whispers post on Facebook)

Route 27 is a north-south highway which runs from Florida to Indiana through Georgia, Tennessee, Kentucky and Ohio. None of these states have a town called Ashford. There is an Ashford in Alabama which is at least a half hour drive away from the portion of Route 27 in Georgia. There are other towns in Georgia on Route 27 which could have been named to give an approximate location along the highway if this story were true.

A Google search for the name, "Jonas Grizzly Keller" (archived here) only found results pointing to similar instances of this clickbait story.

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  Sarah Thompson

Sarah Thompson lives with her family and pets on a small farm in Indiana. She founded a Facebook page and a blog called “Exploiting the Niche” in 2017 to help others learn about manipulative tactics and avoid scams on social media. Since then she has collaborated with journalists in the USA, Canada and Australia and since December 2019 she works as a Social Media Authenticity Analyst at Lead Stories.


 

Read more about or contact Sarah Thompson

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