Mom tweets about son’s drowning, claws come out
Posted
December 15, 2009 at
5:42 pm by
Prescott
Yesterday, at around 6:12 p.m. EST, Twitter user Shellie Ross (@Military_Mom) posted an ominous tweet:
Please pray like never before, my 2 yr old fell in the pool
Several hours later, she posted a link to a picture “remembering [her] million dollar baby,” indicating that her beautiful son, Bryson Drago Ross, had drowned. An immediate outpouring of sympathy went out on Twitter, with some relating stories of their own tragic loss. It was a tremendous display of how online social networks can be used for expressing grief and to receive virtual emotional support.
But then it got ugly. People started questioning the veracity of the story. They wanted “proof.” They lectured everyone to cast a cynical eye and hold off on donating, like we’re all a bunch of mindless rubes ready to have our pockets picked by the first con artist to come along. Others questioned Ross’ parenting skills, even going so far as to say maybe she was too busy with Twitter and ignoring her child, and wondered why she would be on Twitter while her son was being rushed to the hospital (even though it was only one short tweet asking for prayers, not a “play by play” as it was described). Some thought that the timeline of Ross’ tweets were off.
The most vocal skeptic was Madison McGraw, who even went so far as to make phone calls to the police station and local newspapers near the Ross home. She eventually found her verification of the accident (although she’s quick to point out that “no identities were revealed”). McGraw thinks that Ross’ choice to tweet about the event says something about what humankind has become:
And if we’ve become a society that responds to death in this manner: Have to call 911, have to call husband, have to call mother, have to call funeral home, have to Twitter this- then we are seriously failing as a society.
Now, being a pretty cynical guy myself, the part of people questioning a virtually anonymous person’s writing on the internet doesn’t shock me at all — you might want to reflect on how you got such a cold, jaded heart once in a while, but we certainly have a right to our opinion no matter how heinous some might think it may be. The real gall comes from expressing your opinion in public — and even worse directly to the grieving mother (I don’t care if you’re using the qualifier “possibly” or not), that’s just beyond rude, it’s downright sick. That people have the audacity to say “PROVE IT!” to a mom who said she just lost her toddler and is undoubtedly feeling more grief and guilt than any of us who have not gone through the experience could ever imagine, well that, Ms. McGraw, speaks infinitely more about our failure as a society than someone in their darkest moment typing 140 characters ever could.
Tags: bryson drago ross, madison mcgraw, shellie ross, twitter |
46 Responses to “Mom tweets about son’s drowning, claws come out”
RSS feed for comments on this post.
Leave a comment
Comments are moderated and may not appear immediately in an effort to remove commercial messages, irrelevancies, excessive foul language, racist/sexist/hateful comments, spoofed/cloaked IPs and/or personal attacks and will be edited/deleted at our discretion. Thank you for your patience.
31. Layla @ Coupon Journey
December 16, 2009 @ 6:49 pm
I agree with everyone. There could have been a better way to approach this. Did she make a big deal when the word got out that Anissa Mayhew got a stroke? Did she need verification then? I think she should have gotten her verification on her own, rather than involve Twitter. She was tweeting Good Morning America, because she wanted to make @Military_Mom look bad. Look at her tweets to GMA. Really sad. What happened to innocent until proven guilty? It just makes everyone skeptical at a mother who otherwise would have appreciated closeness from her friends, online or real.
32. Bill
December 16, 2009 @ 6:50 pm
I guess I’d prefer to give military_mom the benefit of the doubt rather than shaking my finger and saying tsk-tsk-tsk 24 hours after her kid died.
Is there a lesson to be learned? Sure. Is directly blaming her the way to teach it? I don’t think so. But that’s just my opinion.
33. ChaosRu
December 16, 2009 @ 7:12 pm
People make mistakes, accidents happen. People make every effort to do the right thing and accidents happen. Appointing oneself arbiter of fit parenting, proper socialization, proper lifestyle and attacking a grieving person at their weakest moment is nothing but malicious. Nothing in analyzing where the person made a mistake does nothing to bring back their child. I think it is time for Ms. McGraw’s 15 minutes to be up.
34. Jack
December 16, 2009 @ 9:28 pm
I dont know military_mom and only found out about the shocking tragic loss of her son when I saw it in a tweet. My heart poured out to her. I have to admit thinking about I did find it strange she tweeted and I felt quite distressed that she even bothered to get on Twitter after the tragic death of her son. Having experienced the sudden death of a loved one I know I know I wasn’t able to walk never mind tweet. BUT that being said people handle shock and enormous grief in their own way and who am I or anyone to judge a poor mother reaching out for something…anything in her darkest hour? As one commentator said above I would so rather be duped than to maliciously strike out directly to another mum and be the source of more grief in her darkest hours. Feel suspicion if you want Ms Graw but do you really have to share your thoughts with the rest of the world? This is opinion pieces gone made. This whole incident has sickened to me to the core and made me lose faith in humanity and today I deleted my Twitter account. I’ve had it with “friends” and “followers”. Shame of shame….
35. Shanannon
December 16, 2009 @ 10:55 pm
Everyone is jumping to the conclusion that she tweeted about her son’s death, but I don’t see it that way at all. Her tweet doesn’t say that her son died. Like me, she probably believes in the power of prayer, and at some point when the child was in transport or being worked on in the hospital, she put out a call for prayer to as many people as possible for her son’s life to be saved. Unfortunately, the accident turned out to be fatal, and this is the point in the story we here in Internet-land become aware of what happened.
Rather than assume the tweet was sent while she still had hope for his survival, everyone assumes it was sent after she was told he passed away. Don’t be so critical of this woman who is already going to blame herself until the end of time over this. Could this tragedy have been prevented? Most likely. But don’t judge her for using Twitter and her faith to call on the Ultimate Healer.
36. sl
December 16, 2009 @ 11:38 pm
Look past the timing and delivery and Madison raises some very valid points.
Take Katie’s words (as an example, not as a direct attack on Katie, who I do not know): “…I often sit next to my daughter wherever we are and Tweet from my phone or laptop…” WHY? Why does one have to Tweet while one is with her child? Can’t she just be with her child in the moment?
This is not to say that a parent can never look away, take a phone call, or go online, but more and more we see parents sitting in a restaurant with their ignored child, head down to his iPhone, surfing the ‘net or fingers texting away.
Let’s admit it: Technology is distracting. Social media is sucking away our time and stealing away “real time” from the physically present people in our lives. It makes us look down and away. And in those moments, life - and death - happen.
So yes, Madison has some very valid points.
37. Rhindan
December 17, 2009 @ 7:13 am
Yeah, but her “valid points” were overshadowed by her insistence that MM was being untruthful, and worse, that it was all like the balloon boy hoax. And, really, valid or not, the timing is WAY off. Let’s not make MM a scapegoat for the issues we have with ALL inattentative parents. I don’t know a single parent, myself included, that can be alone all the time with our kids and NOT crave the company of another adult. Before we use this situation as a platform for our grievances, lets remember that somebody is grieving a very recent loss.
38. Dukelaw
December 17, 2009 @ 1:31 pm
There’s just something disheartening about our society when during an emergency you feel the need to tweet to 5,000 people (how many of them have you met in real life?) about a tragedy occurring in your life.
How is it a support network telling strangers you have limited emotional investment with that your child is drowning. What happened to calling your husband, parents, best friend? You tweet about it??
And blaming McGraw is wrong. We know that facebook and twitter accounts get hacked all the time. The fact that this tweet broke social convention is even more a reason why she should check into it.
39. Rhindan
December 17, 2009 @ 2:29 pm
Who’s to say she DIDN’T call her husband and other family first?! Who’s to say this wasn’t the ‘last on the list’? And what is disheartening about it? She asked for prayer. Had she used the telephone to call a church prayer line, would we be chastizing her for THAT?
Responsibility lies where it needs to. We’re not blaming McGraw for Shellie’s actions. No, sir, we are pointing out that McGraw’s OWN tweeting, blogging, and comments about her insistence in “verifying” the story and implying that it was a hoax is wrong, when there was no reason to doubt it. I blame McGraw for making bad judgment calls and pushing them to the absolute limit.
What is disheartening, is that YOU find it disturbing that Shellie asked for prayer. That’s all she did. She didn’t say “OMG My son is dying!” No. She didn’t give us a play-by-play. She ASKED FOR PRAYERS. When we start putting people down for asking for prayers from complete strangers, there’s something sad about that.
40. Liora
December 17, 2009 @ 3:54 pm
Some clarification needed for some of those who posted comments. First, “Madison” didn’t simply ask for verification. If she had done so, this would be a non-story. She copied the mother on most all of these tweets (that’s what putting the @ before the nickname does, and she knows this). She somehow appointed herself as the investigator, the one to warn the public before they gave money because, heaven forbid, it could be a hoax. Now she’s appointed herself as the one to tell the detectives how to do their work.
If you look at her tweets, they are downright malicious. Rather than things stopping when she realized that, indeed, Military_Mom’s child had died, she continues to chide the mother who is obviously suffering. She appears to be basking in her 15 minutes of attention, milking it for everything she can. Meanwhile, as some have reported, she apparently has a photograph on her Flickr page referring to one of her children as “shithead.” This is who has appointed herself as a parent who wouldn’t have such a thing happen to her own child? Okayyy.
For Madison and everyone else who’s quick to judge, look at Broward County Health Department’s own statistics: Most toddlers drown in fewer than 5 minutes. Unless you’ve never had a span of 5 minutes pass with your child being out of view, then you are in no place to judge. Is the problem for you that it’s Twitter? Well, welcome to technology. Ten years ago, she might have been talking on a cell phone. Twenty years ago, she might have been watching TV. Because she was using Twitter doesn’t prove that she is guilty of neglect or that it wasn’t an accident. Five minutes. Did you read that? You can be doing anything for five minutes, and your child can drown in that span.
If you do not believe in prayer, that’s your prerogative. If you think it was somehow insensitive for this mother to ask for prayer when she felt that her child was in need of prayer, that’s your prerogative. However, none of this makes her guilty of neglect. None of it makes it other than an accident. There have been some downright libelous and slanderous things said, and I hope when Miltary_Mom gets past her grief she will see what legal options there are pursue those who have attempted to damage her name. Their words have gone well beyond understandable skepticism or requests for validation, and they need to be held accountable for those words.
41. Dukelaw
December 17, 2009 @ 6:00 pm
After getting more details, I’m more firmly on McGraw’s side.
Ms. Ross tweeted at 5:22pm and her 11 year old son called 911 at 5:23pm (the paramedics arrived at 5:38pm). While asking 5,000 strangers for a prayer is a bit disturbing, tweeting while your son is calling 911 is really disturbing.
McGraw did question the timing (as confirmed by ABC News) and that is problematic (to those of us not part of this Mommy blog community that I just now heard about). She literally was typing words into something (blackberry/computer) while her toddler was wandering in the backyard or already in the pool.
42. sl
December 17, 2009 @ 11:07 pm
Rhindan,
You’re entitled to your opinion, I’m entitled to mine. You make a judgment to defend this woman based on your perception, I make a judgment to question based on mine.
You are choosing to give the benefit of the doubt, and that is your right.
You say that any valid points raised by McGraw are overshadowed by her actions, I say that her actions and delivery don’t cancel out a very clear issue that should be called into question: whether or not this woman’s addiction (and yes, it is an addiction. A review of her Twitter account shows she is on every day all day.) to social media may not have contributed to this poor baby’s death.
Sorry to make this woman the scapegoat. I truly feel for her as a grieving mother. Obviously people have strong reactions to this on both sides. It is unfortunate that this particluar tragic incident does indeed bring to light some serious issues that should not be swept under the rug. It is even more unfortuate that this poor mother was the one who had to realize the consequence of the growing distraction of social media — where we are evermore connected yet disconnected.
43. John Martin
December 18, 2009 @ 1:24 pm
Wow….I can’t understand how anyone who has not lived through the loss of a child can pass judgment on someone who just has. We all grieve differently, our minds are numb and we are just looking for any comfort we can find. You never know what you will do until you walk in them shoes. And I pray that none of you ever have to…..but if you do I am willing to bet you will think back and remember how wrong you were. Nothing we do is wrong and every thought and emotion we have is okay. And we live every day with that loss and even if it is not our fault we will live with the idea that it is, so we don’t need your help to make us feel worse.
44. HotChickityDog
December 18, 2009 @ 3:10 pm
| Amen ! Wow, I could not have said this better. I will repost your wonderful comment on this horrible thing. And, I do believe, that Shellie, when she typed those tragic words, was looking for prayer. A lot of prayer. I think too, people did pray. I know I did. Like never before. I was sitting here, wondering where in the world that family was, and praying for their little boy. I know he’s gone now, but I continue to pray for Shellie, for her husband and family, and I’ll pray too, for the cold heart of Madison McGraw. May she never know the pain she has caused this family. Wow, what a horrible thing to do, in public. Thank you for your wonderful words.
45. repsac3
December 20, 2009 @ 3:40 pm
@Dukelaw:
I trust that since you posted this, you discovered that you had some of your facts wrong, but for anyone who doesn’t know:
From Twitter played no role in drowning of military_mom’s son Bryson | floridatoday.com:
“Martin, the sheriff’s investigator, revealed a detailed timeline that was different from the one given earlier to FLORIDA TODAY.
He said Ross, her 11-year-old son Kris and little Bryson were all outside working on a chicken coop in the far backyard. Ross posted comments on Twitter several times between 5:17 p.m. and 5:22 p.m. about her dogs, the chickens and a rare afternoon fog off the Atlantic Ocean. It is unclear, however, how accurate Twitter time stamps are.
At some point before the mother’s 5:22 p.m. post, Martin said Ross asked Kris to take Bryson, turn off a hose to the pool and go inside. When she finished cleaning the chicken coop, Ross walked through the fog, passed the pool and went inside. When she realized that Bryson was not in the house, she and Kris went to look for him. They found him at the bottom of the pool, and Ross dove in to get him.
Kris called 9-1-1 at 5:23 p.m.
Martin said Ross can be heard on the 9-1-1 tape screaming for help as she tried to revive him. Operators gave her instructions on how to perform CPR on a toddler.
A sheriff’s deputy arrived at the home at 5:30 p.m. and took over the administration of CPR. Brevard County Fire-Rescue paramedics got there two minutes later, put Bryson into an ambulance and tried to revive him on the way to Cape Canaveral Hospital, where they arrived at 5:55 p.m.
Doctors pronounced the toddler dead at 6 p.m.
But at that time, Ross, who was in the waiting room with a victim advocate and a hospital chaplain, did not know that her son had died. At 6:12 p.m., she picked up her cell phone and reached out to her 5,300 online friends, tweeting, “Please pray like never before, my 2 yr old fell in the pool.”
At 6:31 p.m., doctors came to tell her that her son was dead.
I know there are those who will say that she never should’ve trusted her 11 year old with the responsibility of getting 2 year old Bryson into the house, and that they would never, ever, EVER do such a thing, but hindsight is always 20-20. I’m sure many many–I’d even venture to say most–parents have had their 6th grader “watch” their younger siblings for 5 minutes or so without incident. It seldom results in tragedy. This time, it did.
As for her typing words on her cell phone while Bryson was falling into the pool, why does it matter WHAT she was doing in the minutes before? If she wasn’t sending that tweet, she might’ve been taking a picture of the roosters in their clean coops, or walking back to the house, or just going into the bathroom, or calling & ordering a pizza for supper… I fail to see why sending a tweet is any worse than any of these other activities.
She believed she had put her son into the capable hands of his older brother for 5 minutes or so while she finished up. Parents–not you critics, I’m sure, but most regular parents–do that all the time.
Madison McGraw might’ve started out with the right idea (questioning the veracity of the thing in the first minutes, to be sure it wasn’t a donation scam), but when it was verified, and then she started questioning Shellie Ross’ fitness to be a mother and blaming her for her son’s death–even going so far as to send tweets saying such things back to @military_mom herself, KNOWING she’d just lost her son–she revealed herself to be pretty heartless and lacking in common decency. (My “favorite” criticism is the idea that Ms. Ross was looking for fame, when it was McGraw giving the majority of the newspaper & TV interviews… Hypocrisy, thy name is Madison McGraw.)
46. Rhindan
December 20, 2009 @ 8:24 pm
Bingo. I knew the truth would come out.
SL, you’ve got some nerve. To assume that the woman had an “addiction” because her tweets were numerous is bold. I say…prove it. You can’t, because you don’t know her any more than I do, and you obviously can’t say that she was addicted with such flimsy “evidence”. There are businesses and well-known celebrities that tweet as often as Ross did. Go ahead, say they are “addicted” too. Again, you can’t. To imply that frequency equals addiction is a fragile argument.
I made no “judgment,” I made a choice; a choice to keep my mind open to the benefit of the doubt. When did that become wrong? You chose, however, to vilify an innocent woman before getting all of the facts.
To everybody who took McGraw’s side… Miss Britt (link here) had a great blog entry the other day about how we are contributors to what the world is coming to, and not just witnesses.
I’d rather look like an idiot for doubting the haters than look like an a$$ for agreeing with them.