Florida teen commits suicide on webcam

Florida teen commits suicide on webcam

Family horrified viewers or website operators didn’t act sooner to save him

A Florida teenager apparently committed suicide Wednesday with a lethal cocktail of pills in front of his webcam as others watched it live on the internet, Broward County authorities and local media said.

Abraham Biggs, 19, of Pembroke Pines, near Miami, announced his plans to kill himself then took a deadly combination of prescription drugs on Wednesday while he was online with other young people, Broward county authorities said.

Mr Biggs "died in front of his webcam and it was broadcast, but I cannot give more information. We have an investigation in place," said Sergeant John Gazzano of the Broward County Police.

The suicide video first appeared live on Justin.tv, a site that allows users to broadcast live videos from their webcams, then was posted to other sites such as YouTube.com, The Miami Herald reported. Both have since removed the clip.

Family members say they are horrified his life ended before a virtual audience, and infuriated that viewers of the live webcam or operators of the Web site that hosted it didn't act sooner to save him.

Some members of his virtual audience encouraged him to do it, others tried to talk him out of it, and some discussed whether he was taking a dose big enough to kill himself, said Wendy Crane, an investigator with the Broward County medical examiner's office.

Only after police arrived to find Abraham Biggs dead in his father's bed did the Web feed stop Wednesday - 12 hours after the 19-year-old Broward College student first declared on a Web site that he hated himself and planned to die.