The online Dakota Miller prayer request – Fact Check

Messages are spreading online that claim a boy name Dakota Miller is in urgent need of a prayer chain request after being involved in a critical accident. The message urges the reader to forward the message on to their friends.

The inherent issue with viral prayer requests like this one is that when travelling between different users, the message can often get twisted, misinterpreted or conflated with other chain messages, and this is exactly what we’ve seen in the case of Dakota Miller.

Whether you are seeing an accurate message depends largely on what variant of this prayer request you happen to stumble upon, and there are many variants.

To surmise, the below outlines the different variants.

1. A boy name Dakota Miller shot himself and is now on life support.

Determination: OUTDATED

The below version of this rumour that circulated in 2017 is perhaps the closest to an accurate prayer request of all the other variants, and are based on a genuine incident that apparently occurred in May 2017 when a 13 year old boy named Dakota Miller from Kentucky shot himself with his grandfathers gun. An example of this prayer request is below –

Hey, can you help me get a prayer chain going for micheal bass’s little boy named Dakota miller. They had to life flight him. He shot him self and he’s on life support. Forward this to everyone you can please! It’s really appreciated.

So yes, there is a 13 year old named Dakota Miller who shot himself with a rifle. However this prayer request is out-dated since Dakota Miller is no longer on life support since the incident occurred in May 2017, and recent updates suggest the boy is now on the road to recovery. We could not confirm whether the boy’s father was named Michael Bass as quoted in the message.

However, other more inaccurate stories with Dakota Miller’s name also circulate, as per the examples below.

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2. A boy named Dakota is having seizures and needs prayers.

Determination: FALSE

In a confusing twist of events, the prayer request above for Dakota Miller who shot himself in 2017 became conflated with the below message that was already spreading in 2016 that claimed a boy named Dakota was having seizures and needed prayers. Example below –

Hey can you help get a prayer circle going for Dakota. They had to life flight him. He is having seizures. Forward this everywhere please. we need prayers for this little Boy please forward to all of your friends that prayers thank you
This is a friend’s grandson

This message is inaccurate, since there was no known boy named Dakota who was having seizures. Many later claimed this message was meant to name a boy Waylon Wells because some of the variants included the name Dakota Wells, a relative of Waylon who was posting updates on Waylon’s condition, and some users accidentally misidentified Waylon as Dakota. In either case, Waylon was not having seizures, rather suffered from a condition known as Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy.

For some reason, someone took this inaccurate 2016 message and changed a few words to try and make it fit with the 2017 Dakota Miller from Kentucky.

Additionally there were genuine reports of a girl named Dakota who was having seizures in 2015, but it doesn’t appear that this prayer request is related to this case due to conflicting details, namely that the prayer requests identify Dakota as a boy.

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3. A boy named Dakota Miller shot himself with a brad nailer gun and is in critical condition

Determination: FALSE

For reasons unknown, Dakota Miller’s name has come attached to a much older “prayer chain” that asks readers to pray for a young child that managed to shoot themselves with a brad nailer gun, and is in critical condition, as per the below example.

Prayers for Dakota Miller. He’s an 18mo old baby that got hold of a nail gun..😥 They had to life flight him. He shot him self and he’s on life support. Forward this to everyone you can please! It’s really appreciated. MANY PRAYERS FOR BABY & PARENTS.

This pray request has been spreading since at least 2010, and didn’t originally have the name Dakota Miller attached to it. In fact the prayer request originally identified the child as “Kayla Scott’s 22 month old son. However at some time, Dakota Miller’s name was attached. It’s false, and if the original message did originally identifiy a specific incident, it would have been many years ago now, and hence hopelessly outdated.

Why Dakota Miller’s name has become attached to so much nonsense, we don’t know. Either way, if you’re sharing a prayer request with his name, it’s either outdated (point 1) or false (points 2 and 3.)