The Cleveland Police Department has issued a warning regarding Steve Stephens who earlier today streamed his murdering of an elderly man live via Facebook.
Cleveland Police are currently investigating a homicide at 635 E. 93.
No additional victims have been found. Officers continue to search multiple areas.
Suspect did broadcast the killing on Facebook Live and has claimed to have committed multiple other homicides which are yet to be verified.
Suspect in this case is a bm Steve Stephens 6’1 244 bald with a full beard. Wearing dark blue and grey or black striped polo shirt. White or cream colored SUV. Armed and dangerous. If seen call 9-1-1. Do not approach.
Homicide Suspect Wanted (PHOTO) Steve Stephens https://t.co/WlKymPrQX2 pic.twitter.com/GbkFia7yP6
— Cleveland Police (@CLEpolice) April 16, 2017
The Jester’s Internet AWACS social media tracker (signals intelligence for social media) is currently offline, but if he gets it back up, I’ll post the link.
As a general warning, please be careful on social media if you decide you want to investigate this on your own. Many tweets include the video of Stephens committing murder.
For those in the Cleveland, OH area: stay alert and stay safe!
I’ll update as further information becomes available.
Update at 5:50 PM EDT
SHOOTING UPDATE: Suspect vehicle is a white Ford Fusion with temp tag Wanted male still armed and dangerous https://t.co/c2Ypm1i5qx
— Cleveland Police (@CLEpolice) April 16, 2017
Update at 6:00 PM EDT
Some good, and tragically unfortunate, advice in this tweet:
Also, black men in Cleveland that even half way resemble this man please stay indoors. We don't need them snatching y'all up or killing you
— Stewardess Chick (@sososexyjr) April 16, 2017
Also Cleveland 19 News’ Shanice Dunning has an interview with the victim’s family:
I just spoke with a man and woman who said the man killed in the FB live video was their 78 year old father @cleveland19news pic.twitter.com/Gpf3EUafLM
— Shanice (@ShaniceDunning) April 16, 2017
Update at 6:27 PM EDT
Here’s the link to the live feed of Cleveland Mayor Frank G. Jackson and Chief Calvin D. Williams media briefing:
Update at 6:45 PM EDT
Cleveland PD livestreaming the press briefing:
Media update on shooting suspect Steve Stephens https://t.co/FTTPJW3X44
— Cleveland Police (@CLEpolice) April 16, 2017
Update at 8:40 PM EDT
UPDATE Homicide suspect Steve Stephens' actual vehicle has Ohio Temp tag E363630 pic.twitter.com/tE3r5u4BNN
— Cleveland Police (@CLEpolice) April 17, 2017
Raoul
Streaming a murder live on FB (or other social media) is nightmare/future shock range horrible. Jeepers.
Adam L Silverman
@Raoul: It was not pleasant. Unfortunately, as we saw we the organized political violence in Berkeley yesterday, which was also streamed and tweeted, we’re only going to see more and more of this stuff.
ThresherK
@Raoul: Sounds like a horror movie, or (only if a faked kiling, in-universe) a police procedural.
Except it’s still pretty damn far in the “nobody would make this up–too unbeliveable a screenplay” woods.
Adam L Silverman
@ThresherK: I thought we might get something like this from the doofus in Wisconsin last week. I had meant to do a post like this for that knucklehead, but I spent so much of the week flat on my back sleeping off the cold, I didn’t do a front page post until after they’d caught him.
debbie
I’m not sure Facebook Live is of any real benefit.
SiubhanDuinne
Adam, would you make any changes or additions to this (very brief, very simple) explanation of the so-called “nuclear button” or is it a pretty accurate quick-and-dirty for civilians/laypersons?
https://www.axios.com/can-trump-actually-press-a-nuclear-button-2361497788.html
Adam L Silverman
@SiubhanDuinne: That seems about right from my understanding. This is not my area of expertise.
Mike J
Mike J
@SiubhanDuinne: The biscuit has multiple verification codes, only one of which is valid. He needs to be able to remember which one.
Adam L Silverman
@Mike J: Good point, I’ll go grab that tweet and add it upstairs!
SiubhanDuinne
On topic, I keep checking Facebook to see if Connie Schultz has said anything about this. She and Sherrod famously live in Cleveland and love it, but Connie is quick to discuss things in her column and on FB if those things might give Cleveland a black eye. Usually manages, deftly, to link whatever the news story is to larger social/policy issues.
ThresherK
@Adam L Silverman: I did not remember the Wisconsin item.
That I’m half a continent away would probably speak to the WI item’s media profile where I am v. there or the greater midwest.
Adam L Silverman
@ThresherK: Some white anti-government nut from Janesville – not the obvious suspect – streamed himself on social media sending an anti-government manifesto to President Trump, then robbed a gun store, took 16 firearms and ammo, took off supposedly going to kill politicians, and was ultimately captured after a ten day manhunt.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/midwest/ct-joseph-jakubowski-wisconsin-arrested-20170414-story.html
No Drought No More
As Jerry Seinfeld once pointed out: “Armed and dangerous”? As opposed to what? “Armed and gregarious”?
Gravenstone
@Raoul: There is something deeply broken about a society where live broadcasting of shocking crimes becomes almost commonplace. There was a gang rape of a girl in Chicago a few weeks ago that was also put on Facebook live. Depravity for a new audience.
Adam L Silverman
@No Drought No More: I may occasionally resemble the latter.
Anne Laurie
@Adam L Silverman: Ha, I was working on a post about him when you put this up… and then BettyC beat me to the front page!
(Maybe put it up later, if there’s nothing more pressing.)
Adam L Silverman
Just put up the link to the Cleveland mayor and police chief’s media briefing. Sorry I can’t just embed the video, but apparently, WP doesn’t support it.
SiubhanDuinne
@Adam L Silverman:
Maybe, but it’s about a guhsquillion percent more than mine!
Thanks. Sometime (well, actually, pretty much always) with complex subjects, it can be helpful to have a simple-minded explanation as introduction. Can always be enhanced later.
Adam L Silverman
@Anne Laurie: Sorry.
SiubhanDuinne
@Mike J:
Ah, thanks!
rikyrah
That poor family???
I hope that they catch him before he kills again.
Adam L Silverman
The press briefing is starting.
Adam L Silverman
Here’s live feed courtesy of the Cleveland PD:
Citizen_X
@Adam L Silverman:
What? THAT’S NOT POSSIBLE!!! #GunsMakeEverythingBetter
CarolDuhart2
Horrifying. The only good thing about this tech is that it removes all doubt. We know you did it.
And anyone who is callous enough to do something like this should never look out of an unbarred window again.
Mr Stagger Lee
A few years ago, our town had four of it’s officers shot in cold blood by a criminal who was released from Arkansas, by none other than Mike Huckabee. I had a friend who is an African American driving with Arkansas plates. His mother was frantically trying to reach him when word was police was looking for the killer who was getting help from the killer’s friends and family. Thank goodness he got the call, for at the time the police was definitely in a hunter’s mode. One word of praise for the town’s police force, they could have gone full Chicago PD on any African american male, yet their professionalism, was on full display, compliments to their since departed chief.
ThresherK
@Adam L Silverman: Okay, I remember it now. Isn’t Janesville also Paul Ryan’s hometown?
(Second worse place to be from in WI after Appleton, home of Joe McCarthy.)
Adam L Silverman
If any of you all are on twitter, would you be so kind as to tweet @th3j35t3r and ask him to activate his iAWACS for this? Thanks!
Adam L Silverman
@Citizen_X: It is if you do it after hours. During business hours you’re likely to get perforated.
Adam L Silverman
@Mr Stagger Lee: I remember when that happened.
I lived in Conway, AR for a year when I taught at UCA.
Adam L Silverman
@ThresherK: Yes, hence my not the obvious suspect wisecrack.
Adam L Silverman
Adam L Silverman
Just an FYI. Based on both the video and the still shots, he is carrying a GLOCK. It is unclear what caliber, but it still has the stock, plastic GLOCK rear site. It also appears to either be a full size or a compact. Provided it is the most popular caliber, 9mm, and that he only appears to have fired one shot (at point blank range) and that he only has the magazine that is in the gun, he has between 14 and 18 rounds left. It did not appear he was using an extended mag.
Anne Laurie
@Adam L Silverman: No problem — unlike yours, mine was hardly pressing news.
ThresherK
@Adam L Silverman: Well, it’s a gunman. He’s not taken grannies hostage and threatened to starve them to death.
PS David M. Willis refers to Ryan in today’s Dumbing of Age webcomic.
Willis was a religiously raised, home-schooled kid, who broke out of his upbringing, and is one of the better webcomic creators out there. He’s one of the reasons why comic strips in newspapers are being abandoned for the internets.
Adam L Silverman
@ThresherK: Yet…
Keith P.
Sad, but good advice. I hope Rick Ross is not in Cleveland right now.
debbie
Sadly appropriate, 60 Minutes is updating Sandy Hooks parents’ continuing fight against gun violence.
Seth Owen
Facebook trolls jumping on reports the killer is Muslim. SMH.
Adam L Silverman
@debbie: Surprisingly topical. Also, obligatory, “WAKE UP SHEEPLE!”:
http://fusion.net/alex-jones-defense-in-upcoming-custody-battle-is-that-1794370575
geg6
@Keith P.:
For real. My first thought is that he sure looked like Rick Ross.
Batten Down the Hatches
@Adam L Silverman: no shit! I’ve got friends in Conway… Also there bc they teach at UCA. They tell me horror stories about their governor. They’d love to move but when you teach philosophy you take whatever tenure track position you are offered.
Adam L Silverman
@Batten Down the Hatches:
. My cousin at U Maryland College Park got the last one. Only because the guy who had it died. Otherwise he’d be pursuing a career in the food services or janitorial industries.
UCA is actually quite a good school. I was very impressed with my students. And I had wonderful, lovely colleagues. Conway was okay for a bedroom community of Little Rock, but there’s just not a lot to do in the area. As much as I like hiking and outdoor stuff, which there is a lot of, there’s just not a lot happening there.
debbie
@Adam L Silverman:
Thanks, I didn’t know Jones was on trial. Oh, for the days when performance art was respectable.
Jacel
@ThresherK: Dumbing of Age is pretty phenomenal. I started reading it last year and it keeps exceeding expectations. I couldn’t remember what steered me to read it in the first place, so if it was a mention by you in a Balloon Juice thread, thank you very much.
Lizzy L
@Keith P.: My thoughts exactly. A friend of mine in Oakland bears an extremely superficial resemblance to Stephens — he’s African American, broad-shouldered, bald, and bearded. I’m sure there are similar lookalikes in Cleveland. All it takes is one quick glance and a frightened, inexperienced, or racist LEO for there to be another murder.
hellslittlestangel
Wanted by the Cleveland PD as what? A recruit?
Miss Bianca
@Gravenstone: Remember the mass shooting in San Bernadino last week? Nah, me either.
We’ve got to the point where it’s “oh, another nut with a gun, must be Tuesday, ho-hum,” in this country.
Miss Bianca
@Adam L Silverman: “We’re here to help! Wait, where are you going?”
Adam L Silverman
@debbie: Its a custody case for who gets the kids in the divorce.
Adam L Silverman
@Miss Bianca: Something like that.
Anne Laurie
@Miss Bianca:
“Nah, that was just some guy exercising his second-amendment rights on his estranged wife… the dead special-ed kid was just collateral.” /NRA
Villago Delenda Est
@Anne Laurie: The scary thing is, I can see Wayne LaPierre saying that to intimates in his office.
Adam L Silverman
@Villago Delenda Est: There’s something seriously wrong with that guy. The San Bernardino shooter too.
Ben Cisco (onboard the Defiant)
@Adam L Silverman: Done
Miss Bianca
@Villago Delenda Est: I’m too old to emigrate, and I’ve become too damn ornery to want to take this shit lying down for one second longer, and vengeful fantasies aside, I don’t believe in 2nd Amendment solutions against assholes who (in my partial, prejudiced, and ignorant opinion) richly deserve it. What’s a girl to do?
Mustafa
@SiubhanDuinne:
Lifelong clevelander here – it doesn’t matter what Connie or Sherrod think, say or do – cleveland was, is and will always be a shithole. It will never be anything but the mistake on the lake. No one gives a shit if the cost of living is better than anywhere else as long as the entire metropolis is murdery and has god awful weather.
efgoldman
What the fuck? How? Why?
Shit happens. People are too stupid, easily grieved, aggressive and armed.
But: Live on fucking FACEBOOK??!?!?
Adam L Silverman
@Ben Cisco (onboard the Defiant): Thanks!
Sab
@Mustafa: But you have the biggest, bestest potholes I have ever seen.
fuckwit
@Gravenstone: Agree, but then, look at some medieval and Rennasaince paintings, some of which Tom Levenson puts up sometimes. In those days, death and violence were commonplace, and often depicted in art. And I don’t mean just Brughels and Bosch, but paintings of flayings alive, hangings, torture, horrifying stuff. And then of course every church had in it lovingly detailed paintings and sculptures everywhere of a naked man being tortured to death, and that was often the only art around. Real life had stuff that was just as bad.
I think the isolation from (real) violence and horror is a relatively new thing, maybe mid-20th-century.