
The gunshot came at 5:17 a.m., a sharp crack that sliced through the pre-dawn stillness of Four Points Road like a blade through cheap silk. Inside the modest single-story home, Telvin âTelbo Rackinsâ Osborne clutched his chest, blood seeping between his fingers as he slumped against the bedroom wall. His live-in girlfriend, Hannah Grace Cobb, knelt beside him, phone pressed to her ear, voice cracking on the 911 call: âHeâs been shot⌠please, hurry!â She was pressing a towel to the wound, her hands slick with red, when deputies arrived eight minutes later. Osborne, thirty years old, father of two, was already gone. Cobb, twenty-five and white, told officers it was an accident: the gun went off during a drunken struggle after he broke back into the house. But by the time the sun rose over Burke County, the internet had already unearthed a graveyard of tweets that would turn a local tragedy into a national punchline.
The tweets were old, some more than a decade stale, but they aged like milk in the Georgia heat. Under the handle @whitegirlsarefun, Osborne had once declared his allegiance loud and proud: âI love them white girls they already know tailo in between #team white girls #snow bunnies.â Another post, from 2012, read simply, âIâll f a dog before I F A black bee it got to be a white dog though.â There were dozens more, a digital shrine to his preference for white women and his contempt for Black ones. He called them âhood rats,â âghetto,â âungrateful,â while praising âsnow bunniesâ as âclassy,â âloyal,â and âworth dying for.â The irony was so thick it could choke a horse: the man who swore heâd die for a white girl had just done exactly that, at the hands of one.
What began as a domestic dispute spiraled into a cultural autopsy. Was this self-defense? A tragic mishap fueled by alcohol and bad decisions? Or the karmic punchline to a lifetime of self-hatred? By the time Cobb was booked into Burke County Jail on charges of involuntary manslaughter, simple battery, and reckless conduct, Black Twitter had already crowned Osborne the patron saint of âdying by your preference.â Memes flooded timelines: Osborne photoshopped into a âTeam White Girlsâ jersey with a bullet hole in the chest; GIFs of him choosing a dog over a Black woman, only to end up in a coffin; captions like âHe said heâd kill for her⌠turns out she beat him to it.â The internet, cruel and merciless, laughed through the pain. And somewhere in the chaos, a deeper question lingered: how did a manâs words, buried in the digital dust of 2012, come back to define his death in 2025?
The Man Behind the Memes
Telvin Osborne wasnât born to be a cautionary tale. He grew up in Waynesboro, a small town where the biggest drama was usually high school football or who got caught sneaking beers behind the Piggly Wiggly. Friends called him Telbo, a nickname earned from a viral meme in his teens that had nothing to do with race and everything to do with his goofy grin and knack for one-liners. He worked odd jobsâconstruction, auto detailing, a stint at the local Waffle Houseâwhatever paid the bills and left time for his two kids, a six-year-old son and a four-year-old daughter from a previous relationship. He wasnât rich, wasnât famous, but he was known: the guy whoâd show up to a cookout with a cooler of beer and a story that had everyone doubled over.
On social media, though, Osborne was a different animal. His old Twitter account, dormant since 2018, was a time capsule of early-2010s internet bravado. The bio alone was a manifesto: âTeam white girls all day every day.â The tweets were cruder, more explicit, the kind of thing a twenty-year-old posts at 2 a.m. after too many drinks and not enough sense. He didnât just prefer white women; he fetishized them, elevated them to a pedestal built on the backs of Black women he dismissed as unworthy. âBlack girls mad cuz I donât want them,â he wrote in 2013. âStay mad. Snow bunnies > everything.â Another gem: âRather sleep in a kennel than with a loudmouth sistah.â It wasnât subtle. It wasnât clever. It was the raw, unfiltered id of a young man performing masculinity for an audience of strangers.
By 2021, Osborne had mellowedâor so it seemed. He was in a serious relationship with Hannah Cobb, a petite blonde with a cop for a dad and a smile that lit up his Facebook feed. Their couple photos were peak interracial romance: him grinning in a camo hat, her nestled under his arm, captions dripping with devotion. âIâll kill for her Iâll kill about her I ainât scared to say Iâll die about her,â he posted alongside a selfie. His followers ate it up. Black women, less so. Some recognized the pattern: the Black man who worships white women while trashing his own. Theyâd seen it beforeâon forums, in comment sections, in real life. They called it out. Osborne clapped back. The cycle continued.
The Night It All Went Wrong
The fight started at a bar on Liberty Street, the kind of dive where the jukebox plays too loud and the beer is too cheap. Osborne and Cobb had been drinking since happy hour, celebrating nothing in particular. Witnesses later told deputies the couple was loud but not unusualâarguing over something trivial, maybe money, maybe another woman. By closing time, they were stumbling to Cobbâs silver Honda Civic, still bickering. Ring camera footage from the house on Four Points Road picked up the rest.
At 4:52 a.m., the couple pulled into the driveway. Voices escalated immediately. âGet out!â Cobb screamed, shoving Osborne toward the door. He left, slamming it behind him, but not for long. Ten minutes later, he was back, pounding on the glass. âLet me in, Hannah!â The camera caught the scuffle: her pushing, him grabbing her arm, a flash of something metallic in his handâa knife, sheâd later claim. Then the gunshot. One shot, center mass. Osborne staggered inside, collapsed in the bedroom. Cobb called 911 at 5:17 a.m., sobbing, âI didnât mean to⌠it just went off!â
Deputies found the scene exactly as she described: Osborne on the floor, a .38 revolver nearby, a kitchen knife on the counter where she said heâd dropped it. She was cooperative, hands raised, tears streaming. âHe broke in,â she insisted. âI was scared. I keep the gun for protection.â The alcohol on her breath was obviousâboth of them had been drinking heavily, blood tests would later confirm. But Sheriff Alfonzo Williams wasnât convinced. âNo evidence the gun was being cleaned,â he told reporters. âNo signs of an accidental discharge.â The knife was real, but whose story it supported was anyoneâs guess.
Cobb was arrested two days later, on February 25. The charges were heavy: felony involuntary manslaughter, simple battery, family violence, reckless conduct. Her mugshot circulated like wildfireâpale, red-eyed, the kind of face that launches a thousand think pieces. Her father, a retired deputy, refused comment. Whispers of favoritism started immediately: small town, connected family, white woman, Black victim. The math wasnât hard.
The Internet Strikes Back
The tweets resurfaced within hours. Someoneânobody knows whoâdug up @whitegirlsarefun and dropped the screenshots into a Facebook group for Waynesboro locals. From there, it was a rocket. By Monday morning, #TelboRackins was trending nationwide. The posts were brutal:
âTeam white girls all day⌠until one puts you in the ground.â
âMan said heâd rather f*ck a dog than a Black woman. Guess the dog won.â
âDied for the cause. Respect.â
Black women, long the target of Osborneâs venom, led the charge. âWe tried to warn yâall,â one viral post read, racking up 50,000 likes. âYâall chase these Beckys, ignore the red flags, then act shocked when it ends like this.â Another user stitched a video of Osborneâs old tweets with crime scene photos: âHe wrote the script. She just read the last line.â The memes were relentlessâOsborne in heaven, rejected by Black angels, welcomed by a chorus of white women with halos and revolvers. Even the usually sympathetic corners of the internet turned cold. âSkinfolk ainât kinfolk,â one commenter wrote. âThis coon swirler picked his team and lost.â
The comparison to Christian âTobyâ Obumseli was inevitable. In 2022, the Black influencer was stabbed to death by his white OnlyFans model girlfriend, Courtney Clenney, after a fight in their Miami condo. His old tweetsâsimilarly dismissive of Black womenâhad resurfaced then, too, turning public sympathy into scorn. The parallels were eerie: both men fetishized white women, both died violently at their hands, both left behind digital trails of misogynoir. Black Twitter dubbed it âThe Swirler Curse.â Comedian Godfrey went live on Instagram, cackling through the pain: âNo remorse, yâall. He chose his team. Team White Girls got a body count now!â
The Legal Reckoning
The investigation moved fast. Burke County CID interviewed bar patrons, pulled phone records, tested the gun. The knife was Osborneâs, Cobb insistedâheâd grabbed it from the kitchen during the fight. Gunpowder residue was on both their hands. The Ring footage showed the break-in, the struggle, the flash. But intent? That was murkier. Prosecutors pushed for murder. The grand jury, convened in April, disagreed.
On April 24, 2025, they returned a âno bill.â No indictment. Case closed. District Attorney Jared Williams released a terse statement: âAfter thorough review, the evidence does not support criminal charges.â Sheriff Williams urged calm: âNo protests. No riots. Let the family grieve.â There were no riots. There were no protests. Osborneâs cousin took to Facebook, raging about âwhite privilegeâ and âa rigged system,â but the outrage fizzled. Who was going to march for a man whoâd spent years shitting on his own community?
Cobb walked free. Her current whereabouts are unknownâher social media scrubbed, her phone disconnected. Osborneâs kids, too young to understand the memes, went to live with their grandmother. The house on Four Points Road sat empty, a FOR SALE sign staked in the yard like a headstone.
The Bigger Picture
This wasnât just a murder caseâit was a referendum on Black Americaâs dating wars. Interracial relationships arenât rare: 24 percent of Black men marry outside their race, compared to 12 percent of Black women, per the latest Pew data. But the optics of cases like Osborneâs and Obumseliâs fuel a narrative thatâs hard to ignore. Black women, already navigating a world that devalues them, watch as some Black men chase white validation, only to end up brokenâor dead. âWeâre not saying all interracial relationships are bad,â one viral X thread read. âWeâre saying watch the ones who hate us to love them.â
The backlash wasnât universal. Some defended Osborne: âOne drunk night doesnât erase a life.â Others blamed Cobb: âWhite woman tears strike again.â But the loudest voices were the ones laughingâbecause sometimes laughter is the only armor against pain. The memes kept coming, each one sharper than the last. A fake obituary: âTelvin Osborne, beloved father, died as he lived: Team White Girls.â A mock GoFundMe: âHelp bury Telbo with his snow bunnies.â
The Aftermath
Eight months later, the story still simmers. Podcasts dissect it weeklyââKarmaâs Throttle,â âThe Swirler Files.â A documentary is in the works, pitched to Netflix as âWhen Tweets Kill.â Osborneâs kids are growing up without him, their fatherâs legacy reduced to a hashtag. Cobb, wherever she is, carries the weight of a trigger pull and a nationâs judgment.
Waynesboro has moved on, mostly. The house sold in July to a young couple who never knew the story. At Osborneâs funeral, the pastor preached forgiveness: âLove thy neighbor, no matter the color.â The pews were half-empty. Outside, a single protester held a sign: âJustice for Telbo.â Nobody stopped to read it.
The internet, though, never forgets. Every few weeks, a new meme surfacesâOsborne in a âTeam White Girlsâ cape, flying too close to the sun. The joke writes itself, over and over. And in the quiet of Four Points Road, where the gunshot once echoed, the only sound now is the wind, whispering through the pines, carrying the ghost of a man who picked his teamâand paid the ultimate price.