On the morning of Dec. 28, 31-year-old Cody Roark poured himself an espresso, sat on the couch with his phone, and learned that he was dead.
Some two hours away in Hugo, Roark’s coworker Doug Ottewill was helping his 79-year-old mother Helen set up a new iPad he’d bought her for Christmas. Ottewill showed her how to log into Facebook. Helen scrolled. And then came across a graphic of a young man overlayed with a large R.I.P. insignia.
“Oh, this is sad,” Helen told her son. “Do you know this guy?”
The post, from an account labeled “Wild Horse Warriors” with over 6,200 followers and no profile picture, reported the death of a “Denver Broncos analyst” who’d “dedicated over a decade to protecting the team” and had left behind a 5-year-old child, following a heartbreaking domestic violence incident.