Warning: This post contains extremely graphic and upsetting images.
It's a hot summer night and Antonio Perkins is hanging out on the sidewalk in a Chicago neighborhood. He's broadcasting on Facebook Live, talking to people seemingly commenting on the video.
Then a series of shots ring out. The phone tumbles to the grass below. Bits of red can be seen on the green blades. Is that blood? Then the screams come:
"Oh my God!"
"Tony!"
"Call the police!"
"He's bleeding out his month and nose right now!"
The 28-year-old was shot in the neck and head about six minutes into his Facebook Live broadcast Wednesday night, according to the Chicago Sun-Times. Emergency responders found him face down around 8:45 p.m. and by 9:07 p.m., he was pronounced dead. On Friday, a hospital spokesman confirmed Perkins was the man killed in the video, according to the New York Times.
His initial Facebook Live broadcast was shared more than a million times, according to news reports. A copy of the video, below, has been shared more than 645,000 times by a Facebook user declaring: "Chicago we have to do better." The user refers to Perkins by an alias, Cicero Yayo. Warning: The video is extremely graphic.
According to its community standards, Facebook only takes down violent content when it is "shared for sadistic pleasure or to celebrate or glorify violence." However, when the graphic videos are used to raise awareness, they can remain on Facebook with a warning.
Earlier this week, Facebook removed a live video shot by an Islamic State sympathizer as he killed a police commander and his partner in France and threatened the Euro 2016 soccer tournament. Facebook also removed videos filmed last year by a Virginia man as he killed his former colleagues, a reporter and cameraman, on live TV, but copies continued to pop up online.
There have been several instances of crime and violence on live streaming services. It's an issue Facebook, and others, like Periscope, have been grappling with as live streaming becomes more popular and the services themselves invest in the feature.
The companies have little control over the content as it occurs in real time, but they do ask users to flag violent or graphic content, which is then reviewed by moderators. Videos still fall through the cracks, though.
This isn't the first time a Chicago man has captured his own shooting live on Facebook. In March, a 31-year-old was broadcasting to Facebook as he was walking outside. After he was shot, the phone falls to the ground just like Perkins did. Viewers then could see blue sky, a stop sign and the shooter standing over the victim, continuing to pull the trigger at others, in the graphic video below.
Homicides in Chicago outpace New York and Los Angeles. So far this year, more than 280 people have been murdered, according to date collected by local news site DNAinfo. Last year, Chicago saw nearly 500 murders.
Perkins' brother was fatally shot in 1999. One of his last Facebook posts on his Cicero Yayo profile featured his brother's grave. He called him "chief boo." The McDonald's employee also shared pictures of his young children--he called his daughter "cupcake" and his son "baby boy"-- on his Facebook profile.
“A lot of people loved my son; he was a good person,” his father, Daniel Cole, told WGN.
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