Despite what you may have heard, there was not a deadly bus crash in Houston County

Be wary of what you read.

A fake news story claiming six children died in a Houston County bus crash is circulating on social media.

The false story states the accident occurred about 4 p.m. Wednesday after the bus hit a tree. It goes on to say that a spokeswoman for the district attorney reported the deaths.

Beth McLaughlin, a spokeswoman for Houston County schools, was unaware of the false story.

“I just got off the phone with the superintendent ... and that wasn’t mentioned at all,” McLaughlin said. “We have not had any bus crashes in our community.”

Some signs indicate this is a false report. For instance, the website’s URL ends with .info rather than the more familiar .com, .net or .org.

The site also lacks an “About” page, as well as a byline that states the name of the individual or organization responsible for the article.

Additionally, the story is missing quotations from credible sources. One quote claims to be from “police chief Fred Fletcher.” There are no police chiefs by that name in Houston County.

Facebook offers several other tips to identify fake news. Among them include paying attention to strange formatting such as awkward grammar and misspellings. This particular article refers to the date and time as “about 16:00 local time (21:00 GMT) 28 June,” which would be unusual for an American news story.

Facebook also urges readers to consider what photos, if any, are being used in the article. Fake news stories may contain altered images.

Correction: An earlier version of this story misstated the person with whom Houston County schools spokeswoman Beth McLaughlin spoke to on the phone. She spoke to the schools superintendent.

This story was originally published June 29, 2017 at 4:56 PM with the headline "Despite what you may have heard, there was not a deadly bus crash in Houston County."