Hit-and-run allegations against Kamala Harris originate from a dubious website

What is the claim?

Allegations of U.S. presidential candidate Vice President Kamala Harris' involvement in a hit-and-run incident have circulated across online platforms, including X (formerly Twitter), Facebook, TikTok, and Instagram (examples archived here and here).

On X, users shared the claim with captions like, "BREAKING: A 26-year-old woman from San Francisco, Alicia Brown, alleges that Kamala Harris was involved in a 2011 hit-and-run accident that left her unable to walk" (example archived here). Other users added to the allegation, "Alisha Brown, a victim, claims Harris' team intimidated her mother to keep silent. Story surfaced after her mother's death in 2024" (example archived here). The X posts have nearly seven million views combined. 

Online users base the allegation on a supposed local news outlet, KBSF San Fransisco News, which broke the story on September 3 (archived here). 

However, Logically Facts found the claim originates from a questionable news website and has no basis in fact.

What did we find?

According to the KBSF article, in 2011, then-California Attorney General Harris was driving a car in the wrong direction and hit two pedestrians in San Francisco. The story cites the testimony of one of the pedestrians, Alisha Brown, who, due to the injuries suffered, lost her ability to walk. According to Brown, after the accident, two of Harris' people visited the hospital and threatened her mother not to report to the police. The article includes Brown's story both in text and in a video format but provides no evidence of Harris' involvement in the car crash.

The website has since been deactivated, but the video is still circulating on X and YouTube.

In 2010, Vice President Kamala Harris was elected Attorney General of California. Previously, Harris was the District Attorney of San Francisco. However, we could not find any credible reporting on Harris' involvement in a hit-and-run incident in 2011.

The KBSF news website posing as a local San Francisco also lacks credibility. Logically Facts found that the website was registered only on August 20, 2024, two weeks before the story was published.

                                   The screenshot shows the registry date of the kbsf-tv-com website as August 20, 2024. (Source: Who.is/Modified by Logically Facts)

We could not find any public record of a news outlet in the U.S. with the name "KBSF" or "KBSF San Fransisco News." A keyword search did not lead us to any results.

The article included an image of a car with a broken windscreen, with police and firemen working in the background. We ran a reserve image search, which led us to a 2018 news story about a fatal car crash in Guam. The article includes an image that matches the KBSF news piece.

The left screenshot shows the image in the 2024 article, and the right screenshot shows the same image in a 2018 news piece about a car accident in Guam. (Source: kbsf-tv.com/Pacific Daily News/Modified by Logically Facts)

BBC Verify's Shayan Sardarizadeh posted on X that the fake story is "most likely part of a pro-Kremlin disinformation operation run by an ex-Florida cop" and that Brown's video testimony is likely a deepfake.  

Logically Facts contacted Harris' campaign team but has not yet received a response.

The verdict

There is no evidence to support the claim that Kamala Harris was involved in the 2011 hit-and-run incident that left a 13-year-old girl unable to walk. The claim stems from an inauthentic news website that has since been inactivated. Therefore, we marked the claim as false.

Follow Logically Facts' coverage and fact-checking of the U.S. Election 2024 here.