A video from Nicaragua showing a car being swept away by flood waters is going viral on social media with a false claim that it shows terrifying visuals from Karnataka's Dandeli region.
BOOM found that the video shows an accident that took place in Nicaragua on May 29 this year where the driver of the vehicle lost his life.
The initial few seconds of the nearly two-minute-long video shows a car overtaking other vehicles and moving ahead toward a waterlogged area. The car almost immediately begins to float and then gets stuck under a pedestrian bridge due to the water stream. In the later part of the video, a person carrying a green umbrella tries to approach the driver stuck inside the vehicle, but his effort goes in vain as the car is swept away by the swelling waters.
The video is being shared on Facebook with a caption saying, "DANDELI KARNATAKA, NEVER EVER ACT TOO SMART".
Click here to view the post.
Click here to view the post.
Fact Check
BOOM ran a reverse image search on one of the keyframes from the viral video and found a report by El Heraldo published on May 30, 2023.
The report carries screengrabs from the same video and states that the driver named Uriel Romero lost his life due to the tragic accident in Nicaragua.
We compared the visuals used in the news report to the visuals seen in the viral video circulating as Karnataka. The comparison can be seen below.
Taking a cue, we ran a related keyword search "Nicaragua Uriel Romero" and found a Nicaragua-based publication 100%Noticias's news report from May 29 about the incident.
An excerpt from the Spanish report translates to, "Romero, who was driving his truck, tried to cross a natural riverbed at about 9:00 in the morning on Monday, May 29, when he was swept away by a stream of water in a Managua riverbed that divides Veracruz from the Las Jagüitas region, derived from heavy rains."
The same video was also uploaded on May 29, 2023, on 100%Noticias's official YouTube channel.
The description of the video states that a passerby recorded the incident on his mobile when the car got stuck under the pedestrian bridge.
