Man Who Streamed Murder On Facebook Live Found Dead By The Police [Update]

ByAditya Tiwari Updated on
Facebook live murder
Image: Steve Stephens (Facebook via BBC)

Short Bytes: On Sunday afternoon, a shocking video of a murder was streamed via Facebook Live. The whole incident resulted in the demise of a 74-year-old man by a man named Steve Stephens. The Cleveland police issued a warrant and are still searching for the murderer, but the real question is how are we gonna tackle these things.

Update (April 18, 1 am IST): The murder suspect was found dead by the Pennsylvania State Police. The information was disclosed by police on their official twitter handle.

A Facebook post by the department details incident in which Stephens indulged in a pursuit and shot himself with his gun.

The police department in Cleveland is searching for a man for committing a murder. What adds to this horrific inhuman act is that he streamed the incident via Facebook Live which might have been watched by thousands of people by now.

While recording the video, the guy named Steve Stephens was driving his car on Sunday afternoon. He stopped and came out of the car only to silence a 74-year-old man, identified as Robert Goodwin Sr.

In the video, Stephens blamed his ex-girlfriend as the motivation for this acts. His hands moved when firing the shot and he failed to record the “incident”, happened probably due to the impact of the gunshot.

The video, captioned as “Easter day slaughter”, existed on Facebook for three hours before it was taken down because Facebook requires other people to flag a video. Obviously, their current system is incapable of detecting a murder in real-time nor would a human team would be able to do so in the case of live videos which are uploaded in uncountable numbers.

Stephens’ Facebook page has also been removed. According to the Cleveland police, the suspect claimed to have committed multiple murders in a separate video which are yet to be verified.

According to a report by Wired, Facebook later responded that a Facebook Live post was made on Sunday but they made it clear that Stephens first recorded the video and then broadcasted via Facebook Live.

This is not the very first instance of people using Facebook to express their rage and manifest their incapacity to act like a normal human being. It was in April only when an Indian guy used Facebook Live to stream his suicide. Incidents like this one are even worse than the one described in the story.

Facebook might be able to tie some anti-suicide tools or some advanced AI system in the coming future but that’s not enough. These things need to stop or there would be a whole new category of streaming content trending on the internet.

We did an April fool post of Facebook going paid but it appears that would be a right move for some services. At least, for sensitive features like Facebook Live which can be used to by people to post graphic content and cause a widespread outcry.

Correction: The title of this post has been edited as it was misunderstood by some users.

If you have something to add, drop your thoughts and feedback.

Also Read: Snapchat Vs Angry Indian Users: Is Our Media The Real Culprit?

Aditya likes to cover topics related to Microsoft, Windows 10, Apple Watch, and interesting gadgets. But when he is not working, you can find him binge-watching random videos on YouTube (after he has wasted an hour on Netflix trying to find a good show).

Reach out at [email protected]

Similar Posts