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On April 15, 2009, teenage Rachel Wade murdered Sarah Ludemann in Pinellas Park, Fla. In Wade’s testimony and other official statements, she claimed it was an act of self-defense. She now blames social media, talking about how the two had been fighting over MySpace, email, texts and voicemail. They both had been dating the same boy, Joshua Camacho, and for six months prior to the killing, the two traded threatening messages back and forth.
These messages were largely through the social networking platform, MySpace. The messages ranged anywhere from arguments and words to full-blown threats of violence. Fighting and arguing through social media lets people become meaner, more violent and less likely to hold back anything, according to Jay Herbert, Wade's lawyer. When fighting through technology instead of in-person, people are more likely to say things they would likely not say face-to-face.
“It's almost like you can threaten something or say whatever you want and possibly scare them and you don't have to face them at that moment," Wade said in an interview with WFTS-TV in Florida.
These messages are not only hurtful, and sometimes extremely disturbingo they are saved forever on the Internet as pieces of time that cannot be undone.
During her conviction, voicemails from Wade to Ludemann were submitted as evidence, one specifically saying, "I’m going to fucking murder you, Sarah." Herbert has said he was convinced the voicemails were the reason for her conviction.
Wade is appealing her conviction while Herbert travels to schools to talk about the dangers of the Internet and using social media as an outlet to fight, and the consequences.
"I never really took any of that seriously," Wade has said. "I never thought I would be confronted with the situation where we would actually fight."
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