Rio Ferdinand has been the victim of an awful wave of abuse from Twitter users in the wake of his wife Rebecca Ellison’s death.
Rebecca passed away on Friday, May 1st after a battle with cancer. As was unfortunately inevitable, among the outpouring of support from the football world and fans of the former England and Manchester United defender were a vocal minority who used the opportunity to spew forth hateful bile, because this is the Internet and being famous means even your most tragic moments won’t see you being granted a pass by the inexplicably angry.
It seems that many of those who are partaking in the abuse are Chelsea fans, unhappy with Rio’s previous allegations against his former England teammate John Terry, who he accused of racism following a confrontation between defender and Rio’s brother Anton Ferdinand. This led some of these Twitter users to say that the passing of Rebecca Ellison was “karma” for the incident between Terry and Ferdinand.
Another user, who has since deleted their account, also tweeted: “Rio’s wife dying is better than winning the Premier League.” Another tweeted “I hope Rooney dies with her.”
At the time of this writing these accounts have either been closed down or suspended, as Twitter looks to made good on its word of improving its course of action when it comes to online harassment and bullying conducted via the site.
This kind of behaviour is obviously prominent on the ‘net, but it doesn’t seem to get any less shocking the more stories you hear. How anyone could respond to the news of Ellison’s passing, regardless of their opinion on Ferdinand as both a footballer and a person, and use it as ammunition against the player beggars belief. It speaks volumes that all of the tweets were made from accounts with no real names attached to them, as online comments such as these are only made by the most cowardly.
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