Rene Balbuena
A father who responded to a Craigslist ad for a mobile phone and went to meet the posters with his teenage son this weekend may have scheduled his own murder.
The L.A. Times reported police believed Rene Balbuena, 41, was tricked by an online advertisement posted to set him up for a robbery that led to his death. Balbuena and his 15-year-old son went to meet the sellers of a mobile phone in the south Los Angeles neighbourhood of Gramercy Park, after 7 p.m. on Saturday, the Times reported.
They were sitting in the car when two men approached and told them to give up their money. Reports about what happened next vary: the L.A. Times wrote Balbuena stepped out of the car, while NBC Los Angeles reported the thieves fired their weapons into the car, hitting him three times in the chest and grazing his son with a bullet. Doctors pronounced the father dead at the hospital and released his son after treatment.The murder broke a 10-day streak with no homicides in L.A., the longest since 2010.
The murder of Tim Bosma from Ancaster, ON, earlier this year after he posted his truck for sale on Kijiji and AutoTrader also raised questions about online dangers.
Police found Bosma's remains about a week after he took two men on a test drive of the truck, with another person following in another vehicle. Kijiji later released a statement saying that no one contacted Bosma through its website, but it's unclear if his contact information might have been posted somewhere else.
"Kijiji later released a statement saying that no one contacted Bosma through its website, but it's unclear if his contact information might have been posted somewhere else."
What does it matter if it happened or not? It COULD happen, that's the message. Whether it was Kijiji or Craigslist...