Claim: A Twitter user @Cheeboozorrhh has claimed that a viral video of a woman in a wheelchair dancing with a man at an event is singer Celine Dion.
Verdict: False. According to news reports, the woman in the video is Kathy Poirier, not Celine Dion.
Full Text
A Twitter user @Cheeboozorrhh on April 23, 2023, published a video of a woman in a wheelchair dancing with a man in a blue suit at an event while being supported by two other men. In his post, he claimed the woman in the video was singer Celine Dion.
According to the post, @Cheeboozorrhh said, “It’s sad to see the current state of Celine Dion’s health.” In the video, another claim was that she was dancing with her son at his wedding. The video has been retweeted over 100 times and has received over 70,000 views.
On December 8, 2021, the 54-year-old singer said on Instagram that she has Stiff Person Syndrome (SPS), which leaves people as “human statues,” locking the body into rigid positions. She added that there is no cure for such a condition, and it will eventually lead to sufferers being unable to walk or talk. Her deteriorating health forced her to cancel her European tour.
Her condition and stature might have been why the claim was attributed to her, but DUBAWA sought clarity.
Verification
The first hint was whether Celine Dion’s children had married. We discovered she has only three children –19-year-old Rene-Charles Angelil and 9-year-old twin boys Eddy Angelil & Nelson Angelil. Searches reveal that his 19-year-old son Rene-Charles Angelil is not married.
Moreover, using the Invid Verification Tool, DUBAWA also captured video frames. We, therefore, ran a reverse image search on the frames the tool generated. According to the investigation, we found a report by Daily Mail indicating that the woman in the video is Kathy Poirier, diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS).
According to the UK’s National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, the disease, also known as Lou Gehrig’s Disease, is a rare neurological disease that affects motor neurons, which are the nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord that control voluntary muscle movement.
According to the report published in May 2022, her video went viral on April 9, 2022, after her children Nick and Jake helped her stand from her wheelchair so that she could dance with her eldest son Zak Poirier at his wedding. This can also be captured in a news report by Fox News.
To further corroborate this, DUBAWA found a video report on YouTube published on July 2022 by Good Morning America, identifying the woman as Kathy Poirier. In the video, Kathy is seen expressing her joy on that day. In the report was also his son Zak Poirier.
We also found an Instagram post of Kathy and her children published by Tim McCraw, who was tagged as the wedding planner. In a blog post titled “Grit & Grace in the Face of ALS,” Kathy Poirier also published wedding photos.
Conclusion
The viral video of a woman in a wheelchair dancing with her son at his wedding is not Celine Dion, but Kathy Poirier.
