Facebook video slaying suspect kills himself
‘So many questions’ left after manhunt ends in Pennsylvania
A suspect believed to have randomly killed a 74-year-old Ohio man in a live Facebook video kills himself after a police chase in Pennsylvania.
The man suspected of fatally shooting a 74-year-old, randomly selected target and posting a video of the killing on Facebook committed suicide as police were closing in on him Tuesday, authorities said.
Steve Stephens — the subject of a nationwide manhunt after Sunday’s horrific slaying in Cleveland reignited a debate about violence in the internet age — was spotted late Tuesday morning at a McDonald’s in Erie County, Pa.
A restaurant manager told the New York Times that drivethrough employees recognized Stephens, phoned police and tried to delay him by holding up his french fries.
“He just took his nuggets and said, ‘I have to go,’ ” the manager said.
‘We have our closure’
Pennsylvania State Police said they chased him from the McDonald’s for about 2 miles, finally ramming his car.
“As the vehicle was spinning out of control … Stephens pulled a pistol and shot himself in the head,” police said in a statement.
Thus ended a desperate, rapidly expanding search that began Sunday, when a video on Stephens’ Facebook page appeared to show him gunning down Robert Godwin Sr. for no apparent reason.
“We have our closure,” Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson said at a news conference in Ohio.
But Cleveland Police Chief Calvin Williams likely spoke for many when he said moments later: “We have so many questions.”
Godwin was killed on Easter as he walked alone down a residential road in east Cleveland, carrying a grocery bag.
He was reportedly collecting aluminum cans, though his family told CNN he was walking home from a holiday meal when Stephens — 6-foot-1 and 244 pounds, according to police — approached with a cellphone camera.
“I found somebody I’m about to kill,” Stephens said in the video. “He’s an old dude.”
There was little in Stephens’ history, as told by those who knew him, to suggest the violence he was about to document.
He had no criminal history. He had worked for many years at a children’s behavioral center in Ohio, where he had no red flags in his personnel file, according to the Erie Times-News.
Two tragedies
A neighbor told CNN he often stayed with his girlfriend and her children in a house outside Cleveland and was there two days before the killing, fixing the garage.
But Stephens’ mother told CNN he’d bid her a cryptic farewell that weekend. He’d said he was “mad at his girlfriend” and — in a phone call shortly before the killing — that he was “shooting people.”
Authorities say Stephens had never met Godwin before he pulled his Ford Fusion up beside him at about 2 p.m.
Stephens approached Godwin.
“Can you do me a favor?” Stephens said. He asked Godwin to say the name “Joy Lane.”
“Joy Lane?” Godwin responded.
“Yeah,” Stephens said. “She’s the reason why this is about to happen to you.”
Stephens then asked Godwin how old he was, raised a gun into the frame and pulled the trigger.
The camera spun around; when the picture came back into focus, Godwin was on the ground.
In the video, Stephens claimed to have killed more than a dozen people. Police said they have not confirmed any other deaths.
Williams, the police chief, said Tuesday that the case started with one tragedy and ended with another, about 100 miles from the street in Cleveland where Stephens is alleged to have killed Godwin.
“A loss of life is a loss of life,” the chief said.
‘We can do more’
Stephens posted a subsequent video — on his cellphone, telling someone to go online to watch the footage.
“I shamed myself,” he adds in the video, posted by Cleveland.com. “I snapped. Dog, I just snapped, dog. I just snapped.
“She put me at my pushing point, man,” Stephens says, speaking of Joy Lane, laughing and calling it the “Easter Sunday Joy Lane massacre.”
The case prompted Facebook to review how quickly and easily its users can report material that violates standards.
“We have more to do here, and we’re reminded of this this week by the tragedy in Cleveland,” Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said at a developer conference Tuesday. “We will keep doing all we can to prevent tragedies like this from happening.”
Three men were shot last year in Norfolk, Va., while one was broadcasting live on Facebook from inside a car. And in 2015, a shooter killed a TV journalist and her cameraman during a live television broadcast before posting his own video of the killing on Facebook.
In January, four people in Chicago were accused of attacking an 18-year-old disabled man while broadcasting the assault on Facebook Live. They have since pleaded not guilty.
Other live platforms have been used to broadcast similar videos.
Facebook said it suspended Stephens’ account minutes after learning of the gruesome video.