WARNER ROBINS, Ga. — It all started with a Facebook post where a mother says her son got a rash, strep throat, and bacterial infection just days after going to the park.
The post has since gotten over 5,000 shares and 1,000 likes, but we wanted to know if the illness was linked to the water park.
To verify, we spoke to Michael Hokanson from the North Central Health District and talked to Rigby's General Manager Steve Brown about their response.
Steve Brown says he and the rest of the staff first saw the post on Saturday.
"There was symptoms of strep throat, rash, things like that, and we felt pretty strongly that it wasn't something that would result from being at the water park," says Brown, "We responded with just a statement to say we monitor our pools daily, we monitor our pools every two hours, we check them manually every two hours, we have state-of-the-art filtration systems."
Their response did not stop people from sharing the original post. It also prompted a few more accusations.
"They're false statements that are being shared by everybody, and unfortunately, it hurts business. It gives us a bad reputation and we want to try to keep that from happening as much as we can."
Michael Hokanson with the North Central Health District also saw the initial posts. "To start off any investigation, we do need some sort of claim that can be backed up and verified."
So we asked, are there any illnesses directly linked to Rigby's Water World?
Hokanson says no. "At this point in time, we still have not heard back from any people we directly reached out to on Facebook involved in the postings. We have not received any official complaints via our environmental health form."
We verified there are currently not any illnesses linked to Rigby's.
"We have not launched an investigation because we have no substantiated claim to actually look into," Hokanson said.
Rigby's says the pool are safe and being double- and triple-checked daily.
Rigby's and the Health District have both tried reaching out to the woman who made the original post and have yet to hear back.