LAKELAND, Ga. — Lanier County Sheriff Nick Norton is urging residents to take online transactions offline — and into a safe, video-recorded location — after a Facebook Marketplace meetup in Fort Pierce, Florida, ended in a shooting.
“ALWAYS do your Facebook Marketplace trades, swaps and sells from a video recorded parking lot like the Lanier County Sheriff’s Office,” Norton said in a Facebook post Saturday. “If they won’t do it there, it’s probably not legit.”
Norton’s warning followed national news reports out of Fort Pierce, where authorities said a meeting arranged through Facebook Marketplace escalated into gunfire, underscoring the risks that can accompany in-person exchanges with strangers.
The Lanier County Sheriff’s Office offers its parking lot as a designated safe exchange zone, an area covered by surveillance cameras and routinely monitored by law enforcement. Norton said the location is intended to deter criminal activity and provide peace of mind for buyers and sellers…