A North Carolina resident was shot to death on Monday while recording himself on Facebook Live using a selfie stick. Douglas Cleveland Colson later turned himself into the police on Tuesday morning, according to FOX 46, and has been charged with first-degree murder for killing 55-year-old Prentis Robinson.
Robinson was fatally shot four times minutes after he left his local police station to file a report that one of his cellphones has been stolen. The 55-year-old stopped at Wingate Police Department, and even recorded footage of police chief Donnie Gay, before walking back toward his home and encountering Colson. “I'd just spoke to him, it was, I just...it's hard to say anything about that. I just got through talking to him," Gay told WSOC-TV.
According to FOX 46, Robinson was known as a local do-gooder who used Facebook to out suspected drug dealers in the neighborhood. Family members told the outlet he “would sometimes help police find drug dealers, even though he had is own demons.”
In the video, Robinson is walking home when he begins talking to someone off-camera. He's heard telling them “You on Live” multiple times. A man briefly appears in the video, before several shots are heard and Robinson falls to the ground. The camera lands face up, showing footage of the sky and trees, until someone finds Robinson’s body. He was pronounced dead on the scene. Watch a video of the livestream on CNN.
The 55-year-old is unfortunately one of several people whose deaths have been capture in viral Facebook Live videos. In April 2017, Steve Stephens shot and killed 74-year-old Robert Godwin Sr., uploading video of his crime to Facebook. A year earlier in June 2016, a Chicago man also livestreamed the moment he was fatally shot on Facebook.
Facebook issued a statement in response to a lawsuit filed against the social media company by the family of Robert Godwin.
“We want people to feel safe using Facebook, which is why we have policies in place prohibiting direct threats, attacks, serious threats of harm to public and personal safety and other criminal activity,” the statement read. “We give people tools to report content that violates our policies, and take swift action to remove violating content when it’s reported to us.”
