A 19-year-old Broward College student, Abraham Biggs Jr. committed suicide by taking a drug overdose in front of a live Internet audience, with some computer users trying to talk him out of it and others egging him on. Some watchers ultimately contacted the website to notify police, but it was too late!

By the time officers entered Biggs’ home in Pembroke Pines, Florida, he was lying dead in the bedroom. The Broward County Medical Examiner’s Office said that an autopsy showed he died of a toxic combination of opiates and benzodiazepine, a drug used to treat anxiety and insomnia.

Dr. Steve Cina, deputy chief medical examiner of Broward County, said: “We have ruled it a suicide. Part of the terminal event was recorded on a website and there was streaming video.”

Though Biggs, who suffered from what his family said was bipolar disorder or manic depression, committed suicide with the webcam rolling, it is unclear how many people watched it unfold.

In a purported suicide note posted by Miami television station WPLG on its website, Biggs said: “I hate myself and I hate living.” The note also said he had thought about, and attempted suicide many times in the past.

Montana Miller, an assistant professor of popular culture at Bowling Green State University in Ohio, likened Biggs’ death to other public ways of committing suicide, like jumping off a bridge. She said the incident of the public suicide was not shocking, more so considering the way teenagers chronicle every facet of their lives on sites like Facebook and MySpace.