Fact Check: 'Exhausted Funeral Home Employee Cremated While Taking a Nap By Mistake in New York'? Know Truth About This Fake News Going Viral
A piece of news that is now doing the rounds on Twitter is about a funeral home in New York that accidentally cremated a man who was taking a nap. However, there is no truth to this news, but in fact, it is a piece that keeps coming up online year after year with changed details. It is a hoax article which has been modified several times.
Amid the ongoing Coronavirus crisis all over the world, some people are putting out fake reports online. We have seen a lot of fake messages and news related to Coronavirus updates are coming online in the last few days. A piece of news that is now doing the rounds on Twitter is about a funeral home in New York that accidentally cremated a man who was taking a nap. However, there is no truth to this news, but in fact, it is a piece that keeps coming up online year after year with changed details. It is a hoax article which has been modified several times and the latest news is an outcome of the same. Fact Check: Did Italian Doctor Couple Die After Treating Coronavirus Patients? Know Truth Behind Viral Photo Showing Them Share a Last Kiss.
People on Twitter are sharing a news piece by Weekly Inquirer that reads, "NEW YORK, NY: EXHAUSTED FUNERAL HOME EMPLOYEE CREMATED BY MISTAKE WHILE TAKING A NAP." Netizens are sharing the link offering condolences to the man in question. A lot of them have related it to the current situation of Coronavirus in the country, and we wouldn't blame them. However, we would like to bring to light that this news piece is not a real incident. It has been a format that has come up online once again. A similar piece to this went viral even two years ago.
Check Some Tweets Offering Condolences to 'The Man Who Was Cremated':
Scary!
What's Happening in 2020
Fact-checking site Snopes has also done a fact check on a similar story that was published by World News Daily Report on March 1, 2017. The same story was reused by a site spoofing ABC News (abcnews-us.com) in December 2017 and March 2018. Fact Check: Holding Breath For 10 Seconds Show if You Have Coronavirus? Here's The Truth About Viral Claim by PIB.
As per another fact-checking website CFN, this news is a fake claim that has been reused over and over again. They have posted another instance where the same story has been changed with different location and names. The overall format of a person taking a nap being cremated remains the same. Now being the time when severe deaths are recorded because of Coronavirus, the piece has been once again used to pass on fake news. So we would like our readers to not fall for such fake articles and not pass them along without confirming the source.
Fact check
Exhausted funeral home employee cremated while taking a nap in New York
It is a fake piece of news.
(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Apr 13, 2020 11:52 AM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).