Kayla Scott “Prayer Request” message. Fact Check

ByCraig Haley

A prayer request for the child of a woman named Kayla Scott who allegedly shot himself with a brad nailer gun and is now in critical condition is spreading across Facebook.

Online messages urge social media users to pray for a woman named Kayla Scott. The messages claim her 22 month old son shot himself with a brad nailer gun.

UNPROVEN

A version of the message can be seen below.

URGENT PRAYER REQUEST!!! PLEASE RE-POST!! KAYLA SCOTT’S 22 MONTH OLD SON SHOT HIMSELF IN THE CHEST WITH A BRAD NAILER~ IT WENT IN HIS HEART~ HE IS NOW IN CRITICAL CONDITION AND NOT DOING WELL ~ NEITHER IS HIS MOM ~ PLEASE START A PRAYER CHAIN FOR THIS BABY~ PLEASE COPY & REPOST ……AS YOU WOULD WANT SOMEONE TO…DO IT…FOR YOU, thanx guys.

This social media prayer request first surfaced online over a decade ago in early 2010. Back then there were no news reports that we could locate of such an incident taking place, and online searches were incredibly difficult to do since the name of the child or the location of the incident are not mentioned in the message.

What made the case even more confusing was that over the years this message has been spreading, a number of different names have been attached to identify the mother as well as the child. For example…

Passing along this prayer request… Please pray for Cheryl Dewitts’ 22 month old son, he shot himself in the chestwith a brad nailer. It went in his heart, he is in critical condition and not doing well, neither is his mom, please start a prayer chain. Please copy and repost… Please pray… what if it was your child?

And

Prayer request for a friend of a friend of a friend… Deedee Parsons Simpson … her 22 month old son shot himself in the chest with a brad nailer, it went in his heart, he is in critical condition not doing good, neither is mom. please start a prayer chain. Please copy and re post and pray for this little boy!

The varying incarnations didn’t stop there. Later variations changed the mother to a father, now identified as “Michael Bass” and the child as Dakota Miller, who has now changed from 22 months to 18 months.

Prayers for Dakota Miller. He’s an 18mo old baby that got hold of a nail gun..😥 They had to life flight him. He shot him self and he’s on life support. Forward this to everyone you can please! It’s really appreciated. MANY PRAYERS FOR BABY & PARENTS.

And if that wasn’t confusing enough, the Dakota Miller version of the message has its own permutations that don’t even mention a brad nailer gun, thus rendering it an entirely different message to the one we started with above! Those Dakota Miller variants can be seen on a different page here.

However, regardless of your position on “prayer requests” or chains, even if this message did actually happen at some point to any person named on the various iterations of the post, it would now be hopelessly outdated.

Keep up-to-date with all our latest articles. Follow us on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.

Continued below...


Thanks for reading! But before you go… as part of our latest series of articles on how to earn a little extra cash using the Internet (without getting scammed) we have been looking into how you can earn gift vouchers (like Amazon vouchers) using reward-per-action websites such as SwagBucks. If you are interested we even have our own sign-up code to get you started. Want to learn more? We discuss it here. (Or you can just sign-up here and use code Nonsense70SB when registering.)

Become a Facebook Supporter. For 0.99p (~$1.30) a month you can become a Facebook fan, meaning you get an optional Supporter Badge when you comment on our Facebook posts, as well as discounts on our merchandise. You can subscribe here (cancel anytime.)