For Rodney Bradford, 19, updating his Facebook status with cryptic, insignificant details about his life saved him from years in the slammer.
The Brooklyn teenager was exonerated from charges of armed robbery after it was found he updated his Facebook status one minute before the crime occurred.
Bradford was arrested and was subsequently held for 12 days on suspicion of robbing two people in the Farragut Houses, a Brooklyn public housing complex, where he lives on Oct 17.
Bradford and other witnesses attested that he was actually miles away at his father's apartment building in Harlem during the crime.
His defense attorney, Robert Reuland, pointed out to a Brooklyn assistant district attorney that Bradford wrote a message on Facebook asking his girlfriend where his pancakes were one minute before the robbery occurred. The Facebook message read: "ON THE PHONE WITH THIS FAT CHICK . . . . . WHERER MY I HOP"
The district attorney subpoenaed Facebook and the charges were then dropped once it was verified that the Facebook posting was made from a computer at the Harlem apartment complex at 71 West 118th Street in Manhattan, according to The New York Times.
Reuland, however, admitted to The Times that Bradford could have ostensibly had someone else log onto Facebook for him, but it seems unlikely, due to the fact that both his father and stepmother said he was in Harlem at the time.
