A 17-year-old Chicago teen killed one of his friends on Friday with a gun. Although he claimed it was an accident, he made one very ill-advised mistake: admitting to the murder on Snapchat.
Police arrested Anthony Mendoza after 16-year-old Christian Bandemer was found shot-dead in Bridgeport, a neighborhood in Chicago. “I killed Chris and now I’m going to kill myself,” said Mendoza in a Snapchat video taken from the back of a police cruiser, according to prosecutors.
The Chicago Tribune reported that the two boys, joined by Bandemer’s 20-year-old cousin, were toying with a shotgun. The cousin went out of the house to go smoke when he heard a gunshot. He ran back in to find his younger cousin with a bullet wound in his chest, dead. Mendoza reportedly ran off to hide the gun and told the cousin “not to snitch” on the shooting.
Mendoza’a defense team claimed that the shooting was an accident.
The judge seemed not to be jumping to any conclusions. “What this is, is a tragedy. An absolute tragedy,” said Judge Peggy Chiampas, according to The Washington Times. She set Mendoza’s bond to $250,000, ignoring prosecution’s requests for the teen to be held without bail, claiming that she didn’t see enough evidence to prove that the death was absolutely intentional.
Even so, the Snapchat evidence is hard to dispute—the teen put up video proof that he killed his friend. Social media may be great for plenty of things, but murder probably doesn’t fall under that category.