Austin Rollins brought a 9mm Glock to Great Mills High School in Maryland and began shooting Tuesday morning.
Now, Facebook is asking those who visit the teen’s Facebook page to “celebrate” and “remember” his life.
Rollins, 17, shot two of his fellow students inside his high school before a school resource officer engaged him. Rollins suffered a gunshot wound and died on the scene. Two students are now in critical condition. The police resource officer is unhurt, according to reports.
Rollins’ Facebook profile revealed little insight into the Maryland teenager’s life. The profile included just a handful of photos of his friends and basic interests.
His page was officially memorialized by Facebook early Tuesday afternoon. This means that his profile information was changed to past-tense and that a memorial banner appeared above his profile.
Those visiting his page were be asked to “celebrate” the school shooter’s life thanks to a banner that read:
Remembering Austin Rollins
We hope people who love Austin will find comfort in visiting his profile to remember and celebrate his life.
Memorials on Facebook are commonplace for those who have died, but this is the first instance we can find of the embattled social network memorializing a shooter.
According to Facebook here are the rules for a memorialized account:
Memorialized Accounts
Memorialized accounts are a place for friends and family to gather and share memories after a person has passed away. Memorialized accounts have the following key features:
- The word Remembering will be shown next to the person’s name on their profile
- Depending on the privacy settings of the account, friends can share memories on the memorialized timeline
- Content the person shared (example: photos, posts) stays on Facebook and is visible to the audience it was shared with
- Memorialized profiles don’t appear in public spaces such as in suggestions for People You May Know, ads or birthday reminders
- No one can log into a memorialized accoun
- Memorialized accounts that don’t have a legacy contact can’t be changed
- Pages with a sole admin whose account was memorialized will be removed from Facebook if we receive a valid request