FORT WORTH, Texas — The family of a Valley Mills girl who died after contracting a brain-eating amoeba warned in a Facebook post that people are setting up fake accounts in her name to collect donations.
Lily Mae Evant died Monday at Cook Children's Medical Center in Fort Worth Monday. Her family said she contracted the amoeba after swimming in the Brazos River on Sept. 8.
News of Lily's sickness spread across social media with words of support and love pouring in from all over the world. Her cousin, Wendy Scott, said that attention also brought the opportunity for scammers to take advantage of people's good intentions.
"Unfortunately, due to the amount of coverage Lily’s story has received, we are getting reports of fake accounts being set up in Lily’s name," Scott posted to a support group page for Lily's family on Facebook. "In an effort to eliminate confusion, please know the following location are the only approved donation sites our family has set up."
The accounts were listed in the Facebook post as First National Bank if Valley Mills and First National Bank in Whitney.
More than 22,000 people from around the world were pulling and praying for Lily on her Facebook page, “#LilyStrong.” It was a Facebook page where family provided updates on the little girl’s fight; they’ll now turn that page into an amoeba awareness and advocacy page.
According to The Centers for Disease Control, people get infected when water containing Naegleria fowleri enters through the nose.
The amoeba travels to the brain where it destroys brain tissue. The fatality rate when contracting such an amoeba is more than 97%, according to the CDC.
Since 1962, only four people out of 145 infected in the U.S. have survived.
