Someone really has been killing geese in Springfield, Ohio – but it wasn’t Haitian immigrants

False claims by Donald Trump and JD Vance that Haitian immigrants in an Ohio town have been eating people’s pet cats and dogs and “walking off” with geese have dominated the run-up to November’s election. Now it has emerged that someone really has been killing geese – and it isn’t a Haitian immigrant.

Brian Comer of Springfield was issued a citation last month for shooting two geese at a golf course, according to Clark County Municipal Court filings first reported by Texas-based investigative journalist Steven Monacelli. A witness told an officer ahead of Comer’s citation that he saw a “white male, in his late fifties or early sixties” riding a lawnmower before getting off and shooting two geese with a shotgun, the court filings reveal.

Comer was “cooperative” and admitted to shooting the two geese, according to the court filings. Comer told an officer with the Ohio Department of Natural Resources he believed he was entitled to shoot them because the golf course had a “nuisance permit.” An officer then issued him a citation.

He pleaded guilty at his September 18 arraignment, Clark County records show.

Comer’s citation was issued as Trump and Vance spread the false claim that Haitian immigrants were stealing and eating residents’ pets in Springfield. Trump also went on to claim that “migrants are walking off” with geese in the town.

“A recording of 911 calls show that residents are reporting that the migrants are walking off with the town’s geese,” Trump said at a rally in Tuscon, Arizona on September 12, two days after authorities say Comer shot the geese.

“They’re taking the geese,” he added. “You know where the geese are? In the park, in the lake. And even walking off with their pets.”

Just before Trump made this