TAIPEI, Taiwan - A woman in Taiwan killed herself by inhaling poisonous fumes while chatting with friends on Facebook and none of them alerted authorities, police said Tuesday.
Claire Lin
killed herself on her 31st birthday, March 18, and family members who
reported her suicide were unaware of the Facebook conversations that
accompanied it, Taipei police officer Hsieh Ku-ming said.
Lin's
last Facebook entries show her chatting with nine friends, alerting
them to her gradual asphyxiation. One picture uploaded from her mobile
phone depicts a charcoal barbecue burning next to two stuffed animals.
Another shows the room filled with fumes.
One friend identified as Chung Hsin, told Lin, "Be calm, open the window, put out the charcoal fire, please, I beg you."
Lin replied: "The fumes are suffocating. They fill my eyes with tears. Don't write me anymore."
A
few of the Facebook friends chatting with her tried to stop her and
track her down on their own, but none called police. Chung did not
respond to attempts to reach him for comment.
Lin's
last words, in Chinese, were: "Too late. My room is filled with fumes. I
just posted another picture. Even while I'm dying, I still want FB
(Facebook). Must be FB poison. Haha."
Lin's
Facebook postings indicated she was unhappy because her boyfriend was
ignoring her, and had failed to return home to be with her on her
birthday. Her boyfriend found her body the next morning and alerted her
family, Hsieh said.
Hsieh said
he regretted that none of her friends called police to help her during
the 67-minute episode, but he added it may have been difficult for them
to know her whereabouts because of the nature of social media.
"It could be true that it would be hard to track down a Facebook friend without her address or phone contact," Chen said.
Chai Ben-rei, a sociologist at Taiwan's Feng Chia University, said the incident reflected social isolation in the Internet age.
"People
may have doubts about what they see on the Internet because of its
virtual nature, and fail to take action on it," he said.
This is a good article and really hits hard cause u never really can trust anyoe to help u when u really need them to help.
This is a good article and really hits hard cause u never really can trust anyoe to help u when u really need them to help.
Suggestions: Instead of copying and pasting the entire article, simply place the link for the article. If you need some help doing this, let me know. Also, add a bit more reaction to the article. Personally, I think the point of the article is when to notify authorities and when it's OK not to. In this case, I think this tragedy could have been prevented if police had been called as it was occurring.
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