US shocker: 18-year-old killed after he reacts to Facebook post with laughing emoji

It’s the age of bizarre comments on social media, and responses that you may not like. One such heated exchange on social media turned dangerous and resulted in the death of a man and an injury to a woman.

Here are the details of the shocking case in the United States of America.

An argument on social media platform Facebook ended in a tragic turn of events in Missouri, US, recently. An 18-year-old named Isiah Craig Fitzgerald was shot and killed after he reacted to a Facebook profile photo with a laughter emoji. In the incident, a girl was also critically injured.


The police have arrested 20-year-old Tanner Watkins and 18-year-old Kaleb Ramsey and charged them with murder, assault and other offences.

The incident occurred over a Facebook post of Watkins, where he had posted a profile picture of himself with his girlfriend. Fitzgerald reacted to it by posting a laughing emoji that could be misconstrued as someone making fun. Watkins did not like the emoji reaction and decided to meet Fitzgerald at a park to settle matters. In the fight, shots were fired from both sides through their respective vehicles, resulting in Fitzgerald’s death and the unnamed woman’s critical injuries.

Jim McMillen, who is Chief of the Sikeston Department of Public Safety, said that pistols and rifles were used in the incident. Police held Ramsey and Watkins, and confiscated their arms.

A user on Twitter posted pictures of the news with the caption, “Some dude murdered a guy because the guy laughed on a profile picture of him and his girlfriend.”

FAQs

1. Who started Facebook?
   Mark Zuckerberg founded Facebook in 2004 along with Eduardo Saverin, Dustin Moskovitz and Chris Hughes, when they were students at Harvard University.
2. What is an emoji?
   An emoji is a smiley, pictogram, logogram or ideogram embedded in text to fill in emotional cues.