Teenage blogger streams own suicide online

Tech News

Nov 22, 2008, 7:55 GMT

San Francisco - A Florida teenager who broadcast his suicide over a live internet video stream was encouraged to do so by people watching the tragic event online, ABC News reported Friday. The teen who used a webcam to live-stream his suicide Wednesday was reportedly encouraged by other people on the Web site, authorities told ABCNews.com. Abraham Biggs, 19, of Pembroke Pines, Florida ended his life on Wednesday by overdosing on prescription pills. He had linked his webcam to an online body-building message board and to Justin.tv, a live video streaming Web site. After taking the pills, Biggs lay motionless on his bed, at which point someone who was watching the incident alerted emergency services. Police managed to track down Biggs through his computer's IP address, and could be seen in the webcast kicking in the door to his apartment, but by the time they got there Biggs was already dead. Biggs was pronounced dead about 12 hours after he had begun blogging about his suicide. '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. Crane said that Biggs had threatened suicide before and that other contributors to the message board had not taken him seriously. 'The bloggers said that Biggs had threatened to kill himself before and had faked it, so at first they didn't believe him,' said Crane.

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JustinDec 3rd, 2008 - 15:13:25

So, George Carlin was right after all....the All Suicide Channel has come true! If this kid was so stupid as to kill himself for five minutes of fame on the internet, who cares?

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We should care.Dec 8th, 2008 - 09:10:09

If another human being feels so hopeless and misreable that they want to die, as another human being we should care. If you don't care.. have you lost your humanity?

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OhDec 9th, 2008 - 19:47:40

The humanity...

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