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USA: 19 YR OLD IN LIVE WEBCAM SUICIDE

(AGI) - Rome, 21 Nov. – He turned on his webcam, connected to a video-sharing site and committed suicide in front of 1,500 disbelieving viewers. The event took place in Florida, in Broward county. Abraham K. Biggs, 19 years old, had announced on Wednesday that he was planning to kill himself, posting a message on a US forum (bodybuilding.com). No-one believed him, in fact many internet users encouraged him to do it. Sadly, however, he was serious. Yesterday, he connected to Justin.tv, a webcam streaming site, took some pills and lay on his bed, his back turned to the webcam. A few hours passed before other users of the site realised that he was no longer breathing. Someone managed to work out where he was and contacted the local police. When the agents arrived on the scene, the young boy was already dead. The webcam, still streaming, showed four policemen entering the room and checking his pulse. Then, everything went black. The county medical examiner confirmed his decease and the police opened an inquest into the cause of death. Abraham, who was enrolled on the site Justin.tv with the username 'Feel like Ecstasy' (ndr), had explained that he was going to commit suicide on bodybuilding.com, including details of the drugs he was planning on taking. “I am a shi…” he wrote, “I have dissapointed and I feel like I will never improve. I love a girl and I know I’m not good enough for her”. Many users had responded to his post with insults, and they encouraged him to put his suggestion into practice. After his death, many of the users deleted their offensive messages from the website. The administrator of the website Justin.tv, Michael Seibel commented “we are sorry that this has happened and we respect the privacy of who sent the video and of his family”, announcing moreover that the video had been removed from the site. Events of this kind are not new to the internet. In Japan in recent years several cases have been recorded, whilst in the UK last year a 42 year old man from Telford, Kevin Whitrick, hung himself during a chat in which he had been insulted by various site users.