THE family of a murder victim have revealed they first found out he had been killed by seeing it on Facebook.
Stephen McGowan, 23, was stabbed three times after being hunted down by his killers in Greenock, Inverclyde.
His mother and his sister have told of their shock and devastation at the events of July 27 last year.
They only realised something was badly wrong when messages including 'RIP Stephen' were posted on the social media site.
And it was seven hours after the fatal attack when they were told officially by police liaison officers that the father-of-two had died.
Connor Grana, 18, and Graeme Carter, 26, chased Mr McGowan before following him in a taxi. Grana then stabbed Mr McGowan as he tried to escape him.
Earlier this week Grana was jailed for at least 16 years for murder while Carter got nine years and nine months for culpable homicide.
Mr McGowan's mother, Alison, said: "Words cannot describe how it feels. You can never imagine what it is like to be in that position.
"I woke up in the morning and I was playing with my granddaughter without realising anything had happened.
"It wasn't until messages started appearing on Facebook that we had any idea something had happened.
"It was terrible to find out like that."
Chief Superintendent Alan Spiers, who heads up the Inverclyde division of Police Scotland, said: "The police have a set of procedures that we have to follow thoroughly when making these kinds of investigations.
"It is unfortunate that incidents are posted on social media sometimes within minutes, and it is completely outwith our control."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article