November 21st, 2008 // comments (0)

Teen Kills Self Live On The Net

A 19-year-old man has committed suicide live on the internet encouraged by others who were watching, according to reports.

The teenager, named as Abraham K Biggs, from Broward County, Florida, took an overdose of pills while broadcasting himself on Justin.tv, a live video streaming website.

On a chat forum he told others he was going to commit suicide and posted a suicide note on another forum before taking the pills and turning on his webcam.

The 19-year-old lay on his bed and only after several hours of no movement did others begin to take him seriously. With the video still running, forum members managed to contact the local police who eventually broke down the door, found the body and switched off the camera. Up to 1,500 people were viewing the feed, according to one report.

I’ve been scouring some low-hanging areas on the Internet to learn more about this. It seems this kid was a frequent poster on a body-building web forum and he told folks on that site he would be killing himself live on camera this night. He had threatened to commit suicide many times before but this time he would follow through. I hate to post a video of a man getting mauled by tigers followed up by a video of a kid committing suicide on the Internet but I post what’s out there.

“People were egging him on and saying things like ‘go ahead and do it, faggot,’ said Wendy Crane, an investigator at the Broward County Medical Examiner’s office.

I had a very brief association with this website a few years back and I can tell you the folks who run it aren’t out for content like this. Justin.tv has exploded in traffic this year and you’re bound to have terrible incidents like this over time. As for the kid who killed himself, his MySpace page shows he was more than just a little depressed. Comments on his page suggest friends were attempting to contact him and sensed something was wrong.

He lived in Pembroke Pines, Florida.

You can tell by the on-screen comments from the person who recorded this video that the Internet culture has spawned a crowd that won’t hesitate to offend anyone — even the dead.

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