One Clayton County Police Department detective may accept social media as “a major form of communication,” but when Georgia mother, Anna Lamb-Casey, was asked to contact the police by someone outside of her online friends list, neither she nor her daughter took it seriously. It wasn’t until later on when her daughter called the number provided in the message that she was notified of her son’s death.

Rickie Lamb, 30, had gone missing around January 25. For weeks, Lamb-Casey searched for her son calling hospitals and checking jails with no luck. A user by the name of Misty Hancock with a profile picture of rapper TI, contacted Lamb-Casey and her daughter on Facebook following her son’s disappearance. Unknown to Lamb-Casey, messages from someone outside of a person’s friend’s list goes to an inbox labeled “other.” Due to not seeing this folder or recognizing the user, her daughter didn’t call the number until February 14, almost a month after his death.

“They told me that they did the best that they can do. But I’m not sure about that. (Because) if they can track a criminal down, they couldn’t track me down? They could have done better,” she said, in tears. “I’ve been on my job 13 years. They could have found me.”

Clayton County police say they made every effort to contact the family with no response and are investigating the Facebook account that was used.

Read the complete article on The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

BMWK — How do you feel about police contacting a victim’s family through social media? Do you think the police exhausted their options?