CHILLICOTHE, Ohio — A video circulating online after President Donald Trump’s Oct. 28 rally in Chillicothe does not show a Trump supporter being stabbed, the Chillicothe Police Department says — there was no stabbing at the event at all, according to a statement the department gave to Lead Stories, which published a fact check of the claim on Friday, Oct. 30.
The claim appeared in a post and video published Oct. 28 on X by the @DerekMyers account, according to Lead Stories. The video shows a fight and officers responding outside the rally, but it does not show anyone who was stabbed, Lead Stories reported after reviewing the clip.
In an Oct. 30 email to Lead Stories, Chillicothe Police Capt. Michael A.D. Short stated: "There was no stabbing. The incident involved a fight, which an officer intervened to break up. The retention clip securing the officer’s pocketknife became caught in one of the individuals’ shirts during the altercation. The pocketknife did not open. Two individuals were cited for Disorderly Conduct Fighting and no arrests at the event." The quote is from Capt. Short’s statement as published by Lead Stories.
In other words, the object viewers took for a knife attack was an officer’s own pocketknife — still folded, still clipped — snagging on a shirt as the officer separated people who were fighting, according to the department’s account to Lead Stories. Lead Stories also reported that it searched established news coverage and found no reports from established outlets confirming that anyone was stabbed, and no matching stabbing reports using the search terms "Trump," "stabbed" and "Chillicothe."
The rally itself, held Wednesday at the Shoemaker Center at Ohio University Chillicothe, drew thousands of supporters four days before Ohio’s early voting ends and six days before the Nov. 3 election. It was one of the largest political events in Ross County this cycle, and clips from outside the venue spread quickly on social media in the hours afterward — the environment in which a short, unclear video can outrun the facts.
Police accounts and viral claims are not the same thing, and Friday’s exchange is a clean example of why the distinction matters: the department’s version is specific, on the record and checkable — a named captain, a named mechanism for what the video shows, and a paper trail of two disorderly conduct citations. No victim, no hospital report and no arrest for any stabbing has been reported by the department or by any established outlet covering the rally.
What happens next: anyone cited in the fight faces the disorderly conduct process in court, and voters who encounter the video online can weigh it against the Chillicothe Police Department’s statement to Lead Stories. NewsForce247 will update this story if the department releases any further records from the incident.