MySpace friend calls police to avert teenager's suicide

CAMDEN, N.J. -- Jesse Coltrane exchanged instant messages and phone calls with a despondent California teenager, then became startled by the picture on his webcam: The young man who had been discussing suicide was starting to cut the skin of his forearm with a razor blade.

The teen stopped answering the phone and logged off his computer.

That's when Coltrane called Sacramento police, who quickly went in search of the man.

By the time officers found the 18-year-old, he had decided not to go through with the attempt, said police spokesman Sgt. Norm Leong.

"Ultimately we're glad the person in New Jersey took the effort to contact us," he said Wednesday. "He did exactly what we would've wanted him to do."

Coltrane's swift action stood in contrast to other Internet users who did nothing last year as they watched a Florida man kill himself by overdosing on pills in front of his webcam.

About a month ago, the California teen asked to become Coltrane's friend on the social-networking website MySpace. Such requests from strangers are not unusual for the 21-year-old Coltrane, who runs a modeling and entertainment agency and has more than 500 friends listed on the site.

The two got to know each other with a few phone calls and talked mostly about music, Coltrane said.

But the instant message Monday evening was unexpected. It read: "im thinkin abt commitn smtn dat wll hurt alota ppl."

Coltrane's response, according to his computer's archives: "What is that."

"I dnt really wana say but just know its not good."

Coltrane: "Suicide."

When the younger man answered yes, Coltrane dropped out of his online business meeting and communicated with him for about seven hours by telephone, instant message and webcam.

As he counseled the younger man, Coltrane said he thought about the case in Pembroke Pines, Fla., last November when others watched and commented online as a 19-year-old college student killed himself.

To avert a similar tragedy, Coltrane realized, he was the only defense: "He only had one viewer, and I had to do something about it."