Man in Thailand kills baby on Facebook Live
April 25, 2017Police in Thailand said on Tuesday that a man killed his baby before committing suicide during a Facebook Live broadcast.
The two videos reportedly showed 20-year-old Wuttisan Wongtalay hanging his 11-month-old daughter from the rooftop of a deserted building in the town of Phuket. The public was able to access the broadcast on Wongtalay's Facebook page for roughly 24 hours after it was first uploaded.
"This is an appalling incident and our hearts go out to the family of the victim," a Singapore-based Facebook spokesperson told Reuters news agency. "There is absolutely no place for content of this kind of Facebook and it has now been removed."
Facebook addresses outrage
Police Col. Jirasak Siemsak said the bodies of Wongtalay and his daughter were found in a hotel after the videos were reported. The man had been fighting with his wife about her leaving him.
The country's Ministry of Digital Economy contacted Facebook about the incident on Tuesday afternoon after receiving a police request. A ministry spokesperson told Reuters they would not be pressing charges against the company.
The shocking incident comes less than two weeks after a man in the US state of Ohio recorded himself on Facebook Live shooting a man to death. The video was viewable for two hours before Facebook made it inaccessible. In response to the backlash that followed that video, Facebook said it was reviewing how it monitored violent footage posted to the website.
blc/rc (Reuters, AP)