Bakari Ano Taylor charged in shooting murder of Roosevelt Rankins Jr, Montgomery man, killed while streaming on Facebook Live.
An Alabama teen has been arrested in the murder of a man who was shot dead while streaming on Facebook Live, authorities said.
Bakari Ano Taylor, 19, was arrested Friday on capital murder charges in the Jan. 23 shooting death of 34-year-old Roosevelt Rankins Jr. in Montgomery, Al.com reported.
Police announced Sunday that Taylor had been taken into custody by US Marshals and was being held without bond. The circumstances around the shooting are unclear.
In the 45-minute video, Rankins, under the Facebook name Crum King, could be seen in a car looking to his right and flinching moments after a shadow appears next to him, the media outlet reported.
The footage then captured the sound of gunfire before the phone falls to the floorboard.
‘don’t go’ and ‘wake up,’
The livestream continued with Rankins, a father of five, attempting to escape before he crashed the vehicle, with the screen going black. The livestream, however, continued and the victim heard moaning.
Someone could be heard yelling to 911 and telling Rankins to ‘don’t go’ and ‘wake up,’ the report said.
Rankins was discovered by authorities in the crashed vehicle and pronounced dead at the scene. A man who had been in the vehicle with Rankins was not injured.
By the following day, the video had been viewed hundreds of thousands of times.
The victim’s father has since maintained that his son was ‘set up’, possibly for robbery.
“There are too many young black men killing young black men,’ Roosevelt Rankins Sr. said. ‘I can’t understand what’s going on with our people.’
‘The violence has to stop,’ he said, ‘and I’m going to step up and start speaking out about it. I’m hurt.’
