California woman Angela Underwood Jacobs has filed a federal lawsuit against Facebook for what she says is their culpability in the death of her brother, Department of Homeland Security Agent Dave Patrick Underwood in a May 29, 2020 drive by shooting terrorist attack by Boogaloo Boys in Downtown Oakland, NBC News reports. Another DHS agent was wounded in the shooting, aimed at exacerbating civil unrest in the wake of the murder of George Floyd four days earlier.
“Facebook bears responsibility for the murder of my brother. As the lawsuit alleges, Facebook knowingly promoted inflammatory and violent content and connected extremists who plotted and carried out the killing of my brother,” said Underwood Jacobs in a press release. “Facebook must be held responsible for the harm it has caused not just my family, but so many others, by promoting extremist content and building extremist groups on its platform.” Federal prosecutors allege Boogaloos Steven Carrillo and Robert Alvin Justus Jr – who met on the groups – plotted the attacks during the Floyd protests. Carrillo, who was at the time an active duty sergeant in the Air Force, is also charged in the shooting death of a Santa Cruz, California sheriff’s deputy on June 6th, 2020. Both he and Justus qualify for the death penalty, though prosectors have yet to seek it.
Underwood-Jacobs is listed on Ballotpedia as a Pro-Trump delegate to the 2016 Republican National Convention and a former US House primary candidate, interestingly enough. Whatever her prior personal position was toward Facebook before she lost a loved one to pointless violence spawned on the platform is not known, nor does it really matter, but it’s still interesting to see her ignoring the Republican Party line on Facebook – that they’re too hard on extremists with moderation – and rightly taking them on for the tragic results of letting them run wild.