Teen's Suicide Streamed on Internet

Abraham Biggs Jr., a nineteen-year-old resident of Pembroke Pines, Florida committed suicide Wednesday while streaming the whole incident live over his webcam. Viewers watched him lay in his bed, clearly in distress from an overdose and didn't contact authorities for hours. Some viewers allegedly encouraged him to take more drugs, while others debated the authenticity of what they were viewing.

The video from his webcam was streamed for ten hours, and during the time he laid on his bed consistently, starting around 4:00 am. People made comments such as "Oh, that's not enough to kill you," while others were more aggressive, saying things like "go ahead and do it, faggot." Not until 11:00 am did any one of the viewers become concerned. Wendy Crane, the investigator in charge of this case, stated that people began to leave comments, saying things such as "he's not moving" and "he's not breathing." Eventually one person contacted the moderator of the site and requested the boy's information so that police could be notified. Nearly 1,300 people were watching.

Police found Biggs lifelessly laying on his bed in his apartment. They had to break down his door to get in, and upon doing so they immediately turned off the webcam. When Biggs was examined by a coroner, his cause of death was determined to be an intentional overdose of benzodiazepine and other antidepressants. Biggs had blogged about overdoing on drugs earlier in the morning, before he turned on his webcam and also left a suicide note posted online. Joshua Perper, the chief medical examiner involved in the case stated that if someone had notified officials earlier, Biggs would probably have been able to receive the lifesaving help he needed.

Biggs' father is absolutely devastated, and mortified that his son's suicide was entertainment for some people. He stated, "I wish they would have given him the assistance that he was crying out for. They did not respond to him. They only did long after the fact."Even more heart breaking is the fact that he had no reason to believe his son was suicidal. "He was a good son. I'm sorry that no one could help him," he says, "when I was not around to help him myself."