New York (AFP)
A 32-year-old American man killed his father while he was participating in a virtual meeting on Zoom, the first known murder committed during a meeting on this platform, said police in Suffolk County, in the New York suburbs.
It was noon on Thursday when Thomas Scully-Powers stabbed his father, Dwight Powers, 72, to death in the city of Amityville, on Long Island, known in particular for the horror film that bears his name, released in 1979 .
Participants in the virtual meeting who, seeing what was going on, called the emergency, the police said in a statement.
What the participants saw remains to be clarified.
"We do not know what they saw. We think there were about 20 of them" to participate in the meeting, said a police official, Kevin Beyrer, in the local newspaper Newsday. "They just saw it disappear from the screen and then heard it difficult to breathe."
The son tried to escape but was caught by the police near the crime scene and briefly hospitalized.
He was released from hospital on Friday morning and was scheduled to be formally charged this Friday for murder, police said.
This crime seems to be the first to have taken place on the Zoom platform, the number of users of which has exploded with the containment measures imposed to stem the pandemic.
Millions of people now gather daily to chat, have a drink or celebrate birthdays on Zoom as on rival platforms like Google Hangouts or FaceTime.
© 2020 AFP