Anna Lamb-Creasey had been searching for 30-year-old son Ricky Lamb for almost a month, calling local hospitals, prisons and leaving messages on his phone and Facebook account.
It was only by chance, and through sheer desperation, that Anna stumbled across a Facebook message in her ‘other’ folder, from a user by the name of ‘Misty Hancock’ with a profile picture of Atlanta rapper TI.
The message, which had also been sent to Anna’s daughter but written off as junk, read:
'It is important that I speak to you immediately. Call me'
‘Anna, this is Lt Shindler with the Clayton County Police Dept. It is important that I speak to you immediately. Call me at …. Thanks so much.’
Her daughter then called the police department and learned of her brother’s death.
Speaking to a local TV station, distraught Anna said:
“I’m like, OK. I’m thinking it’s just fake.”
“They told me that they did the best that they can do. But I’m not sure about that. If they can track a criminal down, they couldn’t track me down? They could have done better,” she told WSB-TV, in tears.
“I’ve been on my job 13 years. They could have found me.”
Clayton County police spokesman Sgt. Kevin Hughes defended their actions, explaining:
“Every way that we could to reach the family through conventional means, but we were unsuccessful. The young man didn’t have current identification to help us to reach his family.”
However the chief of police personally apologised to the family, and the police investigated the Facebook account used to send the Lamb family the message.