Should they have waited?

[JonGirl]

I really think this boys friends should have waited until the police did their job first instead of finding out about this on the internet 
What does everyone think?

 http://www.news.com.au/national/teengagers-death-posted-on-facebook-first/story-e6frfkvr-1225827675170

[Shores]

I really think this boys friends should have waited until the police did their job first instead of finding out about this on the internet 
What does everyone think?

 http://www.news.com.au/national/teengagers-death-posted-on-facebook-first/story-e6frfkvr-1225827675170

Of course that would be ideal, but the police really dropped the ball on this one. 6 HOURS before notifying a minor's parents that he'd been killed? They admitted there was an unusual delay, so I think it's just a horrible mis-communication this time. The article doesn't say how long after the death the item was posted or whether or not the poster knew that the family had not yet been told.

[RainhaDoTexugo]

I think it's a terrible shame that his family found out through Facebook, but I'm not sure about the practicality of waiting.  How were the friends to know that the police would wait six hours to tell his parents?  How would they know if the parents knew - they can't exactly call up and ask.  I would certainly expect his family to know before then, either from the police, or from somebody - after all, if all his friends knew, obviously the word got out somehow.  It's unfortunate how it turned out, but I don't think the friends can really be blamed.

[Miss March]

Sadly, I do think this is something that will happen more often as we move forward in 2010. A lot of people use some sort of 'instant messaging' be it from Twitter, Facebook, texting, etc. I don't think you can stop news from traveling that way.

I do feel terrible for the family. I am very sorry that they lost their son. Still, I can't fault the police for wanting to be sure of the son's identity before they spoke with the family. It would be unimaginable if they had mistakenly informed the wrong family, due to mistaking identity. This situation is just very sad, all around.

[Hushabye]

I agree with Miss March -- if the police really needed those six hours to positively ID the poor boy, then they had to wait those six hours.  Imagine how horrible it would have been if they had not waited to positively ID him, contacted his family, and then found out that they were wrong.  Now, if it comes out later that they didn't really need that time, then waiting to notify his family was inexcusable.

About the Facebook part... I don't think it was wrong.  The people who posted couldn't have known that the family hadn't been notified yet.  I actually just had a rash of similar postings break out among some friends from college when a friend of theirs died.  I also saw it back in 2004 when a friend of mine died (although that was back before Facebook was open to everyone) -- we tried to make sure that we notified all our mutual friends by phone or email, but it wouldn't surprise me if a person or two found out via Facebook.  I think it's going to happen more and more.

[greenleafmountain]

I agree with Miss March -- if the police really needed those six hours to positively ID the poor boy, then they had to wait those six hours.  Imagine how horrible it would have been if they had not waited to positively ID him, contacted his family, and then found out that they were wrong.  Now, if it comes out later that they didn't really need that time, then waiting to notify his family was inexcusable.

My question is, if the police needed six hours to identify him, how did all these other people on facebook find out?

[TootsNYC]

greenleafmountain, that's my question as well!

If they could identify the driver, from the car's registration, they could have found out which friend he was with as well.

And if the world hadn't had Facebook, mightn't someone have called on the phone to tell his parents they were so sorry? Or been talking about it in the store when the parents walked in?

I was thinking, he died late at night, and I bet the cops just weren't in a horrible hurry, bcs they probably figured that most people they'd ask were actually in bed already.

Except for this:

The other rear-seat passengers - 17-year-old Racheal Graham, of Bidwill, and 16-year-old Laura Daniels, of Oakhurst, were treated at Nepean Hospital for multiple non-life threatening injuries.

Wouldn't these girls have known who else was in the car? And it sounds as though they were in shape to have been asked.

[Hushabye]

I agree with Miss March -- if the police really needed those six hours to positively ID the poor boy, then they had to wait those six hours.  Imagine how horrible it would have been if they had not waited to positively ID him, contacted his family, and then found out that they were wrong.  Now, if it comes out later that they didn't really need that time, then waiting to notify his family was inexcusable.

My question is, if the police needed six hours to identify him, how did all these other people on facebook find out?

It depends.  Some of my friends knew that our friend was dead before he was pronounced at the hospital because they saw him being taken out of the house to the ambulance (small town).  But rumors absolutely *fly* when things like this happen.  One person hears about it over a scanner or from someone at a hospital/police station/etc, and they start spreading the word.  This time it was accurate; sometimes it isn't.

They may have heard from the other people who survived the wreck.  The survivors might have said, "He was in the car with us," but the police may have needed more time to accurately correlate him with the body they had, either because he was terribly battered or because they couldn't find his ID.

But, like I said, they may not have needed that much time.  In which case their delay was truly inexcusable.

[TootsNYC]

Also, how in the world would this boy's friends find out whether the cops had notified his family yet?

If I read about it on Facebook, I would assume that it was completely common knowledge to his next of kin. It would never occur to me that any death I heard about from a nonofficial source wasn't common knowledge already.

[TootsNYC]

Oh, hey--in a subsequent newsstory, it turns out that the car that crashed was being followed by another car containing more of their friends.

So it's not like there was any shortage of people who could have said, "That's Bobby!"


http://www.news.com.au/breaking-news/national/car-crash-teens-were-not-drag-racing/story-e6frfku9-1225827585506

Two more of their friends, who were driving a Commodore behind the ill-fated car and witnessed the crash, told investigators they hadn't been drag racing.
 . . .

I find it hard to believe that the kids in the car behind didn't stop, and that they weren't there when the first cops showed up. And surely THEY could have speeded up the identification/notification process.

The cops should have had a name within 15 minutes of showing up.

How, exactly, were they going to positively identify the guy? By contacting his parents, I'd think. Were they just waiting for the sun to rise, thinking they wouldn't disturb their sleep w/ bad news, and that since it was 3am, no one else would beat them to it? Maybe the speed of modern technology surprised them.

[pierrotlunaire0]

The people who posted on FB would really have no way of knowing if the police had notified or not.  It's very unfortunate that this is how the family found out, but I don't think anyone did anything rude.

[Sterling]

The day after Christmas I got a phone call that an old friend of mine had died about an hour before that in a car crash.  I posted something on Facebook and then took it down because it occurred to me that after only an hour there was a chance that other friends had not heard yet and I didn't want Facebook to be how they heard.

I found out so fast because the passenger in the car called a friend to meet him at the hospital and he started a dasiy chain.  So I can see how people found out fast and the family didn't know yet.  It is something to think about before posting IMHO.

[TootsNYC]

I think the etiquette should be (but it isn't well established yet) that if you're not a "next of kin," you don't mention someone's death in an impersonal place.

it's not  your role to "announce" it.

That said, if you hear by phone, and you go to his Facebook page and it's already on there, you would probably think it was safe.

But you shouldn't ever be first with someone else's news--good or bad.

[Deetee]

I assume the burden of proof that the police use to determine identity has a higher threshold than a facebook post. Then they would notify the family in person (I assume), so there would always be a delay compared to twitter.

[MommyPenguin]

I know that when a friend of ours died in his apartment, his roommate (a friend, but not a super close one) told us, and my husband had the unenviable task of calling his mother and sister to tell them what he'd heard.  He told them to verify with the police department, but it was a case of the police having brought the ID to the friend's apartment and told the roommate that he'd been found, so it was pretty definite.  We weren't sure why the police didn't notify the family, but it had also been quite a few hours after the death.  Possibly since he was no longer a minor it wasn't so easy to figure out who the family were.

I don't really blame the guys too much, they probably assumed that the police notifies family right away (I know I always thought the police did, but sometimes maybe it takes a while for them to track the family down).  And the family doesn't have the *only* claim on the guy, his friends do as well.  Plus, they're all teenagers, they probably think they're much closer to each other than they are to the family.