Mom: Cops Used Facebook to Inform of Son's Death

An Atlanta mother is peeved after what sounds like a police outreach fail following her son's death. When Rickie Lamb, 30, was hit by a car and killed in late January, police sent word to his mother via Facebook, reports the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. One problem with that is that message went into Anna Lamb-Creasey's "other" folder because it wasn't from a friend and lingered there for 20 days. In the meantime, Lamb-Creasey was frantically searching for her son, who lay in the morgue.

The mystery finally ended when Lamb's sister got the same Facebook message, called the phone number, and was told her brother was dead. Inexplicably, the Facebook messages came not from the police department's account, but from the account of someone named Misty Hancock, with an image of rapper TI. As a result, both women initially thought it was fake when they finally saw it. Police, who can't explain the Misty Hancock thing yet, say they tried conventional means to inform the family. But "if they can track a criminal down, they couldn't track me down?" asks Lamb-Creasey. (More Facebook stories.)