It is hard to imagine how the family of Calvin Louis Blackshire, Jr., 27, felt when they watched the video footage of their relative dying. The person who took the footage stood over Blackshire and recorded his suffering, moment by moment, posting it to Facebook Live.
Blackshire was shot on the night of January 19 at Motel 6 in Fayetteville, N.C. where he was reportedly meeting up with someone. He was robbed on arrival at the motel, with a suspect taking his cellphone and shoes. Police are not sure if he was shot during the robbery, or shortly before midnight when police responded to the shooting.
Livestreaming a dying man on Facebook
While Blackshire was lying, bleeding out on the floor at the motel, someone stood over him, live streaming his suffering on Facebook. Reportedly Blackshire died at the Cape Fear Valley Medical Center the next morning. Now police are saying that it wasn’t a crime to take live stream video of the dying man. According to Sgt. Pedro Orellano, police have now interviewed the person who made the 10-minute live video and have concluded that person was not responsible for the death of Blackshire. They also could not take action against the person for filming Blackshire’s last moments, as no law had been broken. Facebook officials reportedly helped police identify the person who recorded and streamed the video and it was then removed from the social media platform.
Police are still searching for a suspect in the crime.
Blackshire’s family have seen the Facebook Live video
Regrettably, Blackshire’s family watched the video of their relative suffering and they told the Fayetteville Observer that they want to know who, “with any kind of decency,” could do something like this. According to that newspaper, Pamela Blackshire, the victim’s mother, said they should have been arrested for watching (and filming) someone dying, without lending that person any kind of assistance.
She said it was even possible to see people standing over her son in the video, taking photos of him.
Fayetteville shooting death livestreamed on Facebook - FB needs to be shut down! NOT THE FIRST TIME. https://t.co/bcvHS1tt2T
— copperpeony (@copperpeony) March 3, 2017
Use your cellphone to call 911, not to livestream the incident
Lt.
Todd Joyce of the Fayetteville, North Carolina police said anyone who sees victims of violence, as in Blackshire’s case, should take out their phone to immediately call 911, not to take video footage of the incident. Reportedly the livestreaming of violence, suicide and murder is becoming more frequent, meaning sometimes thousands of people are watching the event online, with few people actually assisting the victim.
RT mentions in their report the incident back in 2008, when a college student named Abraham Biggs, 19, committed suicide, while streaming his actions live on Justin.tv. It was twelve hours later that someone watching the streaming video recognized Biggs’ location and called police, who reportedly could be seen entering the room as the video ended. Meanwhile hundreds of people watched Biggs kill himself, without anyone attempting to stop him. In fact, some comments on the post reportedly encouraged him to keep on going.
