Teen Arrested For Murder After Allegedly Taking A SnapChat Selfie With Victim

"Teen Arrested For Murder After Allegedly Taking A SnapChat Selfie With Victim"

 

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CREDIT: SHUTTERSTOCK

A Pittsburgh teen is being charged with murder after allegedly sending an incriminating selfie photo with the victim to a friend using SnapChat.

Sixteen-year-old Maxwell Morton is facing first-degree murder and gun possession charges in relation to the death of his Jeanette High School classmate, Ryan Mangan, 16, who was found shot in face last week in his Pittsburgh suburb home, the Pittsburgh Tribune reported.

Police picked up Morton after receiving a selfie photo with Morton posing over Mangan’s body. Morton reportedly sent the photo to a friend via SnapChat, but the friend who received the photo took a screenshot before the picture vanished and sent it to police. Morton confessed to the killing after police picked him up.

The teen murder is one of several that involved self-incriminating evidence on social media. People typically share their lives online, routinely taking pictures of their outfits or food. That same eagerness to share seemingly mundane parts of one’s life lends itself to sharing questionable or criminal behavior. Morton’s account on another photo-sharing app Instagram had several pictures of him posing with guns.

A 17-year old reported gang member was arrested for shooting a rival gang member and two bystanders in a Pittsburgh mall after police discovered Instagram pictures taken before the shooting showed him wearing the same clothes caught on surveillance cameras. Two Missourians, who were high on meth, faced manslaughter charges after reportedly dumped a friend’s body who died of an overdose, and posted a photo of themselves with the body on Facebook.

Selfie culture has permeated all areas of our lives, becoming necessary to showauthenticity while simultaneously being completely contrived. They’re candidness tells the world how users choose to live in the moment but also reveal a person’s state of mind.

“This is really a question about criminal pathology rather than technology,” Pamela Rutledge, a psychology and social media instructor at Fielding Graduate University in Santa Barbara, California told the Pittsburgh Tribune. “Perpetrators in need of validating their power and sense of self-importance have used all kinds of communications to ‘brag’ about criminal activities — from the local hangout to social media, like Facebook.