Behind the investigation. Tracking down the Twitter beef between Geno Hall and his alleged shooter.
FOX 11 INVESTIGATES'
news team had been working for months digging into a burglary and robbery rings
around the University of Southern California. These so-called "flocking crews"
had been devastating the USC community.
Halloween night, news
broke that four men had been gunned down outside an on-campus party at USC. At
first, we assumed it was a flocking robbery gone bad -- like the murder of the
two Chinese graduate students months earlier.
But we were wrong.
Sources at the scene
said this was personal. They said Geno Hall, the primary shooting victim, knew
this guy. It was personal, they said.
Hall is a high school
football star, L.A. City Player of the Year in 2009. He is almost legendary at
Crenshaw High. It isn't hard finding people who know him.
So we checked his
social media for contacts. The Twitter chatter was still online – no
longer.
Police sources and
documents confirmed much of what we found. Hall admitted to police he had
a Twitter beef with Brandon Spencer, known as FreeBleep2.
Now, Brandon Spencer
may be completely innocent of criminal wrongdoing. He's pleaded not guilty. His
war of words with Hall might be nothing more than that. The courts will make
that call.
But judging by the huge
volume of videos posted online, several of which we confirmed as true,
Twitter wars are a growing and dangerous trend.
When you talk trash on
Twitter, you have no idea what might push the other person over the edge.
And this wasn't our
first story about a Twitter beef blowing up. Early last year we reported
a story called Cyber Gangs. One man videotaped himself tracking down his
Twitter rival, beating him silly and posting the whole thing on YouTube.
One of the men later
ended up dead.
So take this as a
cautionary tale. All some people have is their reputation. Their
"name," as Christopher Dorner put it.
As one expert told
us: Tweet an insult to the wrong person and you risk all that you are
… and everything you might become.
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AP photo
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