Hunt for man who killed on Facebook
Police appeal for vigilance with five states on high alert
CHICAGO // US police widened a manhunt yesterday for a gunman who shot and killed an elderly man on Facebook Live in a seemingly random Easter Sunday attack, and then vowed to continue killing.
Police in Cleveland, Ohio, said they believed 37-year-old Steve Stephens, was armed and dangerous, and had alerted authorities in four neighbouring states to be on the lookout for him.
Robert Godwin Sr, 74, was shot and killed on Sunday, apparently picked out at random as he walked home after an Easter dinner, police and media reported.
“We know that Steve is still out there someplace,” said Cleveland police chief Calvin Wil- liams. “We don’t know his condition and, of course, right now we don’t know his location. We’re asking the public to remain vigilant.”
Police issued an arrest warrant for aggravated homicide against Stephens, described as a 1.85-metre, 110-kilogram black man with a full beard.
He was last seen in a white Ford Fusion with temporary licence plates.
In a video uploaded to Stephens’s Facebook page, a man resembling him leaves a vehicle and approaches his victim, who has a gun to his head and then falls to the ground after a shot is fired.
“I killed 13, so I’m working on 14 as we speak,” the suspect says in a second video clip. “I’m just driving around hitting mother-----s, man. I just snapped man.”
The videos were subsequently taken down by Facebook.
Police said Stephens’s broadcast the killing on Facebook Live but said they had not verified his claim to have committed other murders.
Stephens’s mother told the CNN television network that she had called him on Sunday after learning about the video and he told her he was shooting people because he was “mad with his girlfriend”. Police said the woman he alluded to had been taken to a safe place.
Cleveland police have asked the states of Pennsylvania, New York, Indiana and Michigan to be on alert, while the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the US Marshals Service have joined the hunt.