Crime Solved, Thanks To Facebook
By: Maria Oliver/NBC
Updated: March 29, 2009
One neighborhood in Georgia used the site to solve a crime.
A smashed window gets replaced, it's been broken since wednesday afternoon.That's when Al Chapman, an owner of a moving company in Brunswick, pulled into his neighborhood and found his car window smashed.
"I see a big hole in my window, so I say 'what's happened to my truck.' I looked over at the other truck, saw window knocked out of it," says Al Chapman, theft victim.
Someone smashed windows in not one, but two, of his company's work trucks. The thief also stole what was inside, a radar detector, a GPS system, and an XM radio.
Chapman called his wife, Mary, right away and she didn't waste any time.
She and the other wives of Lexington Place, got to work. While police were dusting for fingerprints, Mary hit Facebook to tell her friends what happened.
"When my wife passed it along to her friend, she passed it to her friend who lives in the neighborhood. She Facebooked it back to my wife," says Chapman.
Long story short, Mary told one friend on Facebook, who told another and another. One neighbor wrote back she thought she saw the suspect and knew where he lived. They then called police.
"The officer was on top of her job. She had fingerprints. She had a suspect, but Facebook went straight to the crime and got our criminal."
The suspect was an 18-year-old who lived just down the road and Chapman's wife says, "if it wasn't for facebook, we would have never known who did this, why they did it and where stuff was at."
The police located the stolen items and returned them to the Chapmans.

