Mother updated Twitter as her son, two, lay dying

By Paul Thompson

Shellie Ross has caused outrage for tweeting as paramedics tried to save her dying son


A mother posted messages on Twitter as rescue workers tried to save her dying son.

Shellie Ross, who is in her 30s, sent out ‘tweets’ to the social networking site just minutes after two-year-old Bryson was found floating face down in the family’s swimming pool.

As paramedics tried to revive him, Ross, who used the online name ‘Military-Mom’, posted the note: ‘Please pray like never before, my 2 yr old fell in the pool.’

Five hours later, after he was pronounced dead from drowning, she wrote, ‘Remembering my million dollar baby’.

She then uploaded photos of Bryson to be viewed by her 5,000 followers. But her actions have provoked anger from fellow bloggers and Twitter users, and raised questions about the sharing of private information over the internet.

One user, Madison McGraw, wrote: ‘The first thing I thought when I saw the tweet was that it was very sad. I just thought, “Who would tweet that her son just drowned?” I couldn’t believe it.


Ms Ross, who used the tweet name 'Military-Mom', has defended the use of Twitter to announce her son's death


The person that I have compassion for is her son who might still be alive if Ross interacted with her son like she interacted with people on Twitter.

‘It shows the repercussions for social media gone awry.’

Yesterday, a police spokesman said Ross’s 11-year-old son, who had been cleaning out the chicken coup at the family’s home in Merritt Island, Florida, had called an ambulance after noticing his brother had fallen into the water.

Ross sent her first tweet at 10.22pm British time on Monday – just a minute before the 999 call was made.

Records show an ambulance arrived at the house at 10.38pm and Ross posted another message 34 minutes later.

Yesterday, Ross defended the use of Twitter to announce her son’s death, saying no one ‘had a right to question my actions’. ‘I didn’t tweet-by-tweet the accident,’ she said.

Trisha Haas, who founded the website Momdot.com where Ross worked, defended her friend’s actions, saying: ‘She twitters a lot and was close friends with people in the blogging community’.

Ross and her husband Steven, who is in the U.S. Air Force, have asked to be left in private so they can mourn their son.


source: dailymail