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You may want to think twice about denying that next Facebook request, especially if it’s from Melanie Snanopoulos.

A spurned Facebook friend request became the center of a family feud that led a Long Island woman to literally drive over her cousin with a minivan.

Giselle Penagos, 21, required emergency surgery Monday to fix a broken leg and shattered pelvis after she and her cousin Melanie Spanopoulos sparred viciously over a cyber-Casanova during a wild car ride.

Luckily, an unidentified man rescued Penagos as she lay bleeding in Elmont early Monday morning and rushed her to her father’s house in Queens.
According to the New York Post, Spanopoulos learned that her cousin had gotten in touch with a guy on Facebook while the two women were driving home from a bar; he’d accepted Penagos’ friend request after denying one from Spanopoulous. She pulled over the van to focus on arguing, and Penagos got out. Peagos refused to get back into the vehicle, and Spanopoulos leapt out of the car and started wrestling with her cousin. Then Spanopoulosgot back into the minivan and ran over her cousin once, put the vehicle in reverse and hit Penagos a second time.

“If it wasn’t for the good samaritan, she could very easily have been hit by another car,” said Nassau County Detective Sgt. Robert Galgano.

The temperature was in the single digits and Penagos, unable to move due to her injuries, also might have died of exposure.

Spanopoulos was charged with assault yesterday and released on a $20,000 bail.

Let’s get over being shocked by these headlines. Facebook’s just the latest, greatest tool for fucking up how we treat one another. Akin to “Father ignores telephone calls to pick up junior from soccer practice” or “Woman murders husband after intercepting call on extension from mistress.” This applies also to horrible tales of neglect. Though I guess trash television never had Farmville’s levels of programmatic addictiveness.