Police found the missing, unnamed Chicago teenager on Tuesday and are now searching for a group of five to six men, suspected of gang raping the teen while streaming the footage on Facebook Live. Chicago detectives were approached by the girl’s mother on Monday, who showed police screen captures of the sexual attack on her daughter, taken from the Facebook Live video footage. USA Today reports that the video has since been removed from the social media platform, but was, reportedly, viewed by dozens of people, with no one reporting the incident to the authorities.
Police superintendent was 'visibly upset' at the images of the Chicago teen
According to police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi, the superintendent became visibly upset while viewing the images of the girl. He was also dismayed at the fact that people had watched the rape footage without calling the police. Guglielmi said in his statement that the girl was interviewed by detectives at Area Central and then went to a local hospital for a medical checkup.
Family members spotted the Chicago teenager on Facebook Live
The girl, who attends Lane tech High School, was last seen when she left to go to a store on Sunday afternoon. It was on Monday morning that her mother’s concern turned to real fear, when her uncle phoned to say the teenager had been seen on a Facebook Live video, being gang raped by several boys.
It was then that the mother took the screen captured images from the video to the police. Reportedly the teenager has disappeared once before, but according to her mother, she was found in a neighborhood park later the same day.
Besides the group of men involved in the sexual attack on the Chicago teen, police are also trying to track down the owner of the Facebook page that displayed the video.
Facebook Live and the shooting of Philando Castile
As reported by USA Today, there have been several incidents involving Facebook Live in the media recently. Footage that was livestreamed to the social media platform by Philando Castile’s girlfriend, Diamond Reynolds, showing the fatal shooting of Castile, will likely be used in the prosecution of Jeronimo Yanez, the Minnesota police officer involved in the shooting. That trial is set tentatively to begin on May 30.
