Hindustan Times ST (Mumbai)

Suspect in murder aired on Facebook shoots himself to death after chase

-

The suspect who killed a grandfathe­r in Ohio and posted a video of it on Facebook shot and killed himself after a brief pursuit by police in Pennsylvan­ia on Tuesday.

The suspect, Steve Stephens, had claimed to have killed 13 people and said he will kill more. But police had not found any evidence yet of his other killings.

Stephens killed Robert Godwin, a 74-year-old father of 10 and grandfathe­r to 14, in an apparent case of random shooting as the victim walked home after an Easter lunch on Sunday.

“I snapped, I just snapped,” Stephens, a job counselor for teens and young adults, said in the video. He had been on he run since, and there were no credible sighting of him since. Police had announced a reward of $50,000 for informatio­n leading to his arrest.

According to a timeline released by Facebook, Stevens first posted a video of himself announcing his plan to kill some and two minutes later posted a video of himself shooting and killing Godwin. A few minutes after that, he went live and confessed. Facebook disabled Steven’s account soon after it received complaints about the video. “As a result of this terrible series of events, we are reviewing our reporting flows to be sure people can report videos and other material that violates our standards as easily and quickly as possible,” Justin Osofsky, Facebook’s vicepresid­ent for global operations

Newspapers in English

Newspapers from India