Mother upset at cops' 'strange' Facebook notice of son's death

No thanks to a weird Facebook message from police, a mother in the United States learned about her son's death —almost a month too late.

 

Anna Lamb-Creasey is angry with Georgia police for using a "strange name" in notifying her of her son's death, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported.

 

Mrs. Creasey had been looking for her son Rickie Lamb, 30, who had been missing since Jan. 25.

 

It turned out Rickey died after a driver hit him while he was crossing Tara Boulevard and Old Dixie road Jan. 24.

 

Clayton County police managed to contact her via a Facebook messaging feature - but since the police were not Facebook friends with her, the message was routed to Mrs. Creasey's "Other" messages folder.

 

AJC said Clayton County police said exhausted all means to contact the family in a more conventional way, including checking several addresses but could not reach anyone.

 

But while Mrs. Creasey and her daughter saw the message in her "Other" folder, they initially did not take it seriously because the police account's strange name - Misty Hancock - and the profile picture of Atlanta rapper TI. 

 

"I'm like, OK. I'm thinking it's just fake," Mrs. Creasey said.

 

Only last Feb. 14 - nearly a month after Lamb went missing - did Mrs. Creasey's daughter call the number on the Misty Hancock page, and an officer informed her of Rickie's death.

 

Mrs. Creasey is also upset that police could not reach her by conventional means.

 

"(I)f they can track a criminal down, they couldn't track me down? They could have done better. I've been on my job 13 years. They could have found me," she said.

 

She added police should have used a police department Facebook profile.

 

"People need to know that it's a police department trying to contact them. If you just have a picture of a rapper T.I. no one's gonna take that serious," her friend Melissa Wilson added. — TJD, GMA News