LisaW
Time for me to FLY!
Member since 5/05 13199 total posts
Name:
Did I ever tell you that I hate people?
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Re: Teen on Myspace..
This has really been bothering me, so I did some research, and its true 
O.C. teen warned online of killing self
Social-networking Web sites raise issue of how to gauge seriousness of postings that threaten harm.
By GREG HARDESTY,
The Orange County Register
MISSION VIEJO – A 17-year-old boy committed suicide Tuesday morning after posting warnings on a social-networking Web site for teens and young adults that could have been seen by hundreds.
Some people sent messages pleading with the boy not to harm himself, but local police said they were not aware of anyone contacting them in the days leading up to his death.
The case is similar to one recently, in which an Aliso Viejo teen posted threats before killing two neighbors and himself.
Once-private dramas now play out in public forums like MySpace.com, where teens talk about favorite bands and crushes but also use profanity, and discuss sex and drug use.
In some ways, the Web site and others represent a new frontier. In an arena in which anonymity invites fantasy, how do you know whether someone is really serious about hurting himself or others? And who do you go to?
Sharon Gerstenzang, a Fountain Valley psychiatrist, said there generally is an "unawareness of seriousness" among teens because they "don't have the life experience" adults do.
"But they need to listen to their heart and gut, and pay attention to three words: intent to harm," Gerstenzang said. "Is there a real intent to harm here? If so, they need to take action instantly.
"You can feel another person over the Internet or the telephone. You can feel if there's earnestness. You can tell."
In the latest case, the Mission Viejo teen began communicating his troubled feelings at least a year ago, according to one posting. His hometown and pictures of him with his friends were on the site. His full name was not on his homepage profile.
By Monday night, some of his friends were becoming alarmed, and posted messages urging him not to hurt himself.
But at 8:14 the next morning, he left a message saying "call the police."
He added, "im soo sorry," and at about 8:30 a.m. sent a suicide text message over his cell phone, Orange County Sheriff's spokesman Jim Amormino said.
Friends at Capistrano Valley High School alerted school officials, who called his mother. She rushed home. Paramedics had arrived first and found her only child dead from a gunshot wound in a bathroom of their Mission Viejo home.
In an interview, the mother requested that the boy's name not be used in the newspaper.
As word of the teenager's death spread, his large community of online friends, those at his school – Serra Continuation School in San Juan Capistrano – and his devastated relatives have been asking themselves:
Should we have known?
The suicide occurred a month to the day after another troubled teenager, William Freund, 19, of Aliso Viejo, killed two neighbors and then himself in a rampage he telegraphed in an online forum.
In his MySpace.com profile, the Mission Viejo boy said he was married and 8 feet, 11 inches tall. That he loves girls "who cry.'' That he made more than $250,000 a year.
His user name was "you BROKE my LIFE."
At least some of his online friends believe he made his intent to harm himself clear in some of his postings.
"This could of ben stoped,''read one posting about 11 hours after the boy shot himself.
Read another: "we all loved you..u broke are lives...I'm sry I was just to slow...''
The night before the teen killed himself, one of the more than 500 people he regularly shared his thoughts and pictures on the Web site wrote:
I'm here for you
plz don't do it...
Still, the family said they saw no signs of despair.
In interviews Thursday, as teen after teen streamed into his home, his mother and grandparents said there were no signs.
He waited until his mother, a sergeant first class Army reservist who spent a year in Iraq before returning in April, was at work at her insurance company.
His stepfather was out of the country.
The boy with light-brown bangs falling past his eyes broke into a safe containing a pistol, according to his mother.
Then he killed himself.
David Dezarn, a youth minister at Mission Hills Community Church in Rancho Santa Margarita, said he talked to the teen about two weeks ago to get to know him better.
The boy was interested in religion, Dezarn said.
"He wanted to know if something happened to him, would he go to heaven?" Dezarn recalled.
His mother recalled his good qualities.
"My son touched hundreds of people. He'd ask me for an extra $5 to take to school because he knew some kids wouldn't have lunch. He helped everyone else through their problems.
"When it came to him, I guess he couldn't deal with them," she said.
"Young people (often) cry out for help, and people don't hear," the boy's grandmother said. "This happens every day."
Said his grandfather: "We missed all the signs. He kept it all to himself."
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