“Hold Your Fire, On I’m Facebook!”
A 31-year-old upstate New York man who held police at bay for nearly 12 hours apparently was updating his Twitter and Facebook postings during the standoff, officials said.
Police finally used flash-bang grenades and tear gas to remove Ryan Whidden and his wife, Nina, from their home, where Whidden barricaded the pair after discharging a firearm into his own cars in his driveway.
During the ordeal, during which nearby residents were evacuated from the neighborhood, Whidden appeared to mock police, who were speaking to him through a bullhorn.
“I love the robo voice,” he wrote on Facebook shortly before 10:00 am on Monday, roughly 40 minutes after barricading himself in his home with his wife.
He then “liked” his own status, before commenting, at 9:57 a.m., “You all can handle my lightwork [sic].”
Other status updates apparently removed from the account, but which were screen-captured and uploaded by morning-show listeners to local radio station 98.9 The Buzz, were much more ominous.
“You have no clue how long I waited for this day,” Whidden, whose Facebook account says he is a veteran of the United States Army, posted on Facebook. “[M]an the contrast in flavor is sweeter than I imagined.”
He went on to write, “[Expletive] me sideways I have missed killing things.”
Bizarrely, he appears to have gone on to comment on North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong Un, sometime after that before sharing the status update again. And a post to his Twitter account, dated Sunday evening but shared on Monday, defends Detroit Lions defensive tackle Ndamukong Suh.
“I am curious how many people calling you stupid, immature or anything never go above the speed limit,” Whidden wrote to Suh’s Twitter account. “[I’m] not holding my breath.”
Whidden was charged with criminal possession of a weapon. He has been arraigned and remanded to the Ontario County Jail in lieu of $100,000 bond. Even as he awaits trial, however, the incident that has put him behind bars is actively being discussed on Facebook, blurring the line between news and popular culture.
“Maybe he heard a noise outside and he was just [following] Joe Biden’s instructions,” wrote one listener to the Buzz morning show on the show’s Facebook fan page. Biden has famously said for those who feel they need to protect themselves to go “Buy a shotgun.”
Read the full news article at WND.