Police push to end false social media claims involving deaths of teen, woman

Chicago police are trying to calm a west side community on edge and quash once and for all fake claims on social media involving the deaths of a teen and a woman.

Chicago police say the rumors on social media lead to hundreds of tips that are based off false information. Police still have to look into the tips, which the superintendent says takes away from what they should be doing.

The fears have created what the Chicago police superintendent calls a “social media frenzy."

Rumors of a serial killer on the loose, the girls are being trafficked for their organs and some are still missing -- police say all of those claims are incorrect and unfounded.

And in a community meeting closed off to news cameras, Eddie Johnson set the record straight.

He did the same when speaking to the media.

“There were six cases of missing women being profiled in the media. Out of those six, four of them have been located and returned to their families,” Johnson said.

The other two were found dead -- their bodies badly decomposed -- but no signs of trauma.

15-year-old Sadarria Davis' body was found in a vacant west side building and last week, the body of 26-year-old Shantieya Smith was found in an abandoned garage two blocks from where she went missing.

The superintendent says they believe both were last seen with the same man, who's since been arrested outside Memphis.

“He's in custody right now in Tennessee and on something totally unrelated,” Johnson said.

Chicago detectives are on their way to question him, but they say he is not a murder suspect. The deaths have not been deemed homicides because the medical examiner's office is still waiting on toxicology results.

“Every day I wake up and look in the mirror, I am a black man in the city of Chicago so if there were a hint of a pattern or a serial kidnapper out there, trust me we would be out there in a moments' notice,” Johnson said.