Robert Godwin Sr., the 74-year-old man who was shot dead on a sidewalk by a man who recorded the entire thing and posted it to Facebook, was remembered by his relatives as a “good man” even as they mourned his loss on Easter Sunday.
“This man right here was a good man. I just hate that he’s gone,” his son, Robert Godwin Jr., told WOIO-TV in Cleveland.
“I don’t know what I’m going to do. It’s not real,” he added.
An unidentified woman with him chimed in, “I feel like my heart is going to stop.”
I just spoke with a man and woman who said the man killed in the FB live video was their 78 year old father @cleveland19news pic.twitter.com/Gpf3EUafLM
— Shanice (@ShaniceDunning) April 16, 2017
Godwin said that he had not yet watched the video that was recorded of his father’s death and posted to Facebook and didn’t think that he would, saying, “I don’t really want to see it.”
In a video posted to Facebook, the suspected shooter, Steve Stephens, can be seen goading Godwin into saying “Joy Lane” before he is killed. The video was taken down from Facebook, but Stephens reportedly promised that he would continue to kill people until he was stopped. In another video, he claimed that he had killed 15 people, though Cleveland police said that they were only aware of one shooting death.