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.
Stephens’ Facebook page has since been taken down. You can watch other videos in which he talks about his reasons for the killing here.
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 car 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 Godwin Sr.:
I just spoke with a man and woman who said the man killed in the FB live video was their 78 year old father @cleveland19news pic.twitter.com/Gpf3EUafLM
— Shanice (@ShaniceDunning) April 16, 2017
“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.”
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.
“This shit is real,” he wrote on Facebook.
Steve Stephens. (Facebook)
On Facebook, Stephens blamed the shootings on a woman, who appears to have been his girlfriend. Heavy is not naming that woman for her safety and privacy. He wrote, “three years I spent with this bitch … I wish we never met.”
In the video showing him shooting an elderly man, he asks him to say his ex-girlfriend’s name before shooting him.
“She’s the reason this is about to happen to you,” he says.
Cleveland Police said in a Facebook post that Steve Stephens is 6’1 and weighs 244 pounds, with a bald head and a full beard, wearing dark blue and grey or a black striped polo shirt. He is driving a white or cream colored Ford Fusion.
UPDATE Homicide suspect Steve Stephens’ actual vehicle has Ohio Temp tag E363630 pic.twitter.com/tE3r5u4BNN
— Cleveland Police (@CLEpolice) April 17, 2017