Cleveland Police have confirmed that a video posted to Facebook Live showing an elderly man being shot is legitimate. The video was posted Sunday by a Facebook user going by the name “Stevie Steve,” who has been identified by police as Steve Stephens.
You can watch the video below (warning: very graphic):
Stephens’ Facebook page has since been taken down. You can watch other videos in which he talks about his reasons for the killing here.
In the shocking video, Stephens can be seen driving down the road and he says, “Found me somebody I’m going to kill, this guy right here, this old dude,” before exiting his vehicle. He walks up to the man and begins talking to him, asking how old he is before pulling out a gun.
The man tries to shield himself before Stephens fires once, hitting the man in the head.
The video shows the man on the ground, bleeding as Stephens walks back to his SUV and drives off.
The shooting happened at 635 East 93rd Street, police said.
Family members spoke about the victim, identified by police as 74-year-old Robert Goodwin Sr.:
“He’s good guy. He’d give you the shirt off his back,” a family member told reporters. “This man right here was a good man. I hate he’s gone. It’s not real.”
Police said Goodwin was picked at random.
In another Facebook post, Stephens said he has killed 15 people. He had been posting on Facebook for at least four hours before his page was taken down.
His first post called the shootings an “Easter day slaughter.” In that post, he claimed to have killed 12 people, and said he “won’t stop” until his mother and another woman call him.
“I’m the #goodguy,” he wrote.
In later posts, he claimed to have killed three more people. He wrote that many of the bodies were in an abandoned house.
Cleveland Police said in a press release that only one homicide has been confirmed.