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They fucked up the fucking up of the fuckup!

And now I have baud making fun of me. this day can’t get worse.

They traffic in fear. it is their only currency. if we are fearful, they are winning.

To the privileged, equality seems like oppression.

This is dead girl, live boy, a goat, two wetsuits and a dildo territory.  oh, and pink furry handcuffs.

No offense, but this thread hasn’t been about you for quite a while.

Whatever happens next week, the fight doesn’t end.

Every reporter and pundit should have to declare if they ever vacationed with a billionaire.

Do we throw up our hands or do we roll up our sleeves? (hint, door #2)

Bark louder, little dog.

Proof that we need a blogger ethics panel.

The willow is too close to the house.

Anyone who bans teaching American history has no right to shape America’s future.

You’re just a puppy masquerading as an old coot.

if you can’t see it, then you are useless in the fight to stop it.

Second rate reporter says what?

All hail the time of the bunny!

When do we start airlifting the women and children out of Texas?

The real work of an opposition party is to hold the people in power accountable.

DeSantis transforming Florida into 1930s Germany with gators and theme parks.

Let the trolls come, and then ignore them. that’s the worst thing you can do to a troll.

Stop using mental illness to avoid talking about armed white supremacy.

Following reporting rules is only for the little people, apparently.

Putting aside our relentless self-interest because the moral imperative is crystal clear.

You are here: Home / Politics / America / Breaking News For Those in Cleveland, Ohio: Murder Suspect Armed and Dangerous

Breaking News For Those in Cleveland, Ohio: Murder Suspect Armed and Dangerous

by | 62 Comments

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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.

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

Update at 6:00 PM EDT

Some good, and tragically unfortunate, advice in this tweet:

Also Cleveland 19 News’ Shanice Dunning has an interview with the victim’s family:

https://twitter.com/ShaniceDunning/status/853719072697180164

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:

http://fox8.com/on-air/live-streaming-sc/

Update at 6:45 PM EDT

Cleveland PD livestreaming the press briefing:

Update at 8:40 PM EDT

Reader Interactions

62Comments

  1. 1.

    Raoul

    Streaming a murder live on FB (or other social media) is nightmare/future shock range horrible. Jeepers.

  2. 2.

    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.

  3. 3.

    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.

  4. 4.

    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.

  8. 8.

    Mike J

    Stewardess Chick‏ @sososexyjr 27 minutes ago
    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

  11. 11.

    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.

  12. 12.

    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.

  14. 14.

    No Drought No More

    As Jerry Seinfeld once pointed out: “Armed and dangerous”? As opposed to what? “Armed and gregarious”?

  15. 15.

    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.

  17. 17.

    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.)

  18. 18.

    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.

  19. 19.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Adam L Silverman:

    This is not my area of expertise.

    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.

  26. 26.

    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.

  27. 27.

    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.

  28. 28.

    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.)

  29. 29.

    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!

  33. 33.

    Adam L Silverman

  34. 34.

    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.

  36. 36.

    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.

  38. 38.

    Keith P.

    Also, black men in Cleveland that even half way resemble this man please stay indoors.

    Sad, but good advice. I hope Rick Ross is not in Cleveland right now.

  39. 39.

    debbie

    Sadly appropriate, 60 Minutes is updating Sandy Hooks parents’ continuing fight against gun violence.

  41. 41.

    Adam L Silverman

    @debbie: Surprisingly topical. Also, obligatory, “WAKE UP SHEEPLE!”:
    fusion.net/alex-jones-defense-in-upcoming-custody-battle-is-that-1794370575

    The man who claims the Sandy Hook Elementary School Massacre was staged will be in a Texas courtroom over the next two weeks to argue that he is mentally fit to maintain custody of his three kids. To prove this, Jones’ attorneys will say the InfoWars boss and friend of Donald Trump is a fraud.

    To be fair, that’s not exactly what the attorneys are arguing. Rather, attorney Randall Wilhite told a judge during a pretrial hearing that Jones is a “performance artist,” according to a report in the Austin-American Statesman, which is covering the lengthy (and expensive) custody dispute.

    The children’s mother, Kelly Jones, believes that not only is Jones a bad parent, he also poses a threat to their three kids. And she doesn’t buy the argument that his InfoWars persona is an act.

    Here’s what she told a judge at the pretrial hearing in Travis County, according to the Statesman:

    “He’s not a stable person,” she said of the man with whom her 14-year-old son and 9- and 12-year-old daughters have lived since her 2015 divorce. “He says he wants to break Alec Baldwin’s neck. He wants J-Lo to get raped.

    “I’m concerned that he is engaged in felonious behavior, threatening a member of Congress,” she said, referring to his recent comments about California Democrat Adam Schiff. “He broadcasts from home. The children are there, watching him broadcast.”

    Wilhite said using InfoWars to judge Alex Jones would be like evaluating Jack Nicholson based on his interpretation of the Joker in Batman, the Statesman writes.

    Duly noted. From this day forward, Jones’ reckless verbal dances with the devil in the pale moonlight are hereby confirmed as works of fiction. You hear that, Donald?

  43. 43.

    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.

  44. 44.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Batten Down the Hatches:

    when you teach philosophy you take whatever tenure track position you are offered.

    . 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.

  46. 46.

    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.

  47. 47.

    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.

  49. 49.

    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.

  53. 53.

    Anne Laurie

    @Miss Bianca:

    Remember the mass shooting in San Bernadino last week? Nah, me either.

    “Nah, that was just some guy exercising his second-amendment rights on his estranged wife… the dead special-ed kid was just collateral.” /NRA

  57. 57.

    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?

  58. 58.

    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.

  59. 59.

    efgoldman

    Suspect did broadcast the killing on Facebook Live

    What the fuck? How? Why?
    Shit happens. People are too stupid, easily grieved, aggressive and armed.
    But: Live on fucking FACEBOOK??!?!?

  62. 62.

    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.

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