Amid the multiple protests calling for racial equality in the wake of George Floyd's and Rayshard Brooks' death, an image of a beat-up woman had gone viral on social media.
The meme claims that the woman it depicts, Aracely Henriquez, was assaulted by Floyd and his accomplices when they raided her home. It also states that Henriquez was pregnant at the time and was asked by Floyd if she wanted him to kill her baby.
Deserved death?
Although truth has been shed on Floyd's criminal record, the meme exaggerates the information and depicts an entirely unrelated person, Andrea Sincignano. Sincignano was a student who was reportedly raped and brutally assaulted in 2018 in Madrid, as reported by Snopes.
The incident that led to Floyd's death was due to a report of a counterfeit $20 bill and is not connected to any robbery or any of his past actions.
The photo indeed pictures Sincignano in the aftermath of the horrific crime, but it does not depict Henriquez, and the picture does not, in any way, connect back to Floyd.
The home robbery crime that involved Floyd and Henriquez occurred in 2007, and the details of the event are a lot calmer than what the meme suggests.
Also Read: Rayshard Brooks Autopsy Reveals Death By Organ Damage and Blood Loss from Two Gunshot Wounds
Calling out injustice
The female student, Sincignano, however, has opened up about the rapidly spreading meme on Facebook by writing an awareness post.
In her social media account, the student writes that the photo was captured in a hospital in Spain after she was violently beaten and subsequently raped by a stranger.
Sincignano shared her disgust and disappointment that her image is being used as propaganda or clickbait to justify Floyd's death.
In less than half a day, the image had garnered more than 7,000 shares on the social media platform. Sincignano states that several users have shared the photo and captioning it with their disgust of what Floyd allegedly did to the innocent woman.
On her post, Sincignano also expressed her hopes that people would use the opportunity to learn that social media is not a news platform, and they should not believe everything they see posted on it.
The student also expresses her desire to have anyone who sees the picture to report it and inform the person who shared it of the truth behind the claim.
Sincignano said her heart was filled with pain with the events that have been occurring in her country recently.
She reached out to everyone not to use recent developments as well as the picture to spread lies and hate across different channels-especially those who have had their family members taken away from them in an unjust incident.
The robbery of Henriquez was massively exaggerated in the caption of the picture, and there was no evidence to support the claim that she was pregnant at the time when Floyd committed the crime.
Henriquez was indeed injured by another man and not Floyd, and the picture does not illustrate the true extent of her injuries.
