French prosecutors launched an investigation on Wednesday after a 19-year-old woman committed suicide by throwing herself in front of a suburban train near Paris and streamed the act live on Periscope
French prosecutors launched an investigation on Wednesday after a 19-year-old woman committed suicide by throwing herself in front of a suburban train near Paris and streamed the act live on Periscope.
The suicide, which took place on Tuesday at a station in Egly, south of Paris, is the latest controversy to hit the Twitter-owned streaming service, which has recently seen rapes and assaults shown live.
The unnamed French woman “sent a text to one of her friends several minutes before her death to make them aware of her intentions,” said prosecutor Eric Lallement. “She also made statements to Internet users via the Periscope application to explain her act.”
A judicial source said the victim “spoke of a rape and named the aggressor” during the filming, adding that the claims were being treated with caution at this stage.
Footage of the woman’s actual death was removed by Periscope but some of the video leading up to the suicide was republished by users, and was still available on YouTube.
The woman is seen on a couch, smoking a cigarette, saying the video is “not designed to create a buzz... but to make people react, to open their minds, and nothing else”.
The video then cuts to a black screen, and what appear to be the voices of emergency personnel can be faintly heard. Messages of concern from Periscope users are seen flashing up on the screen.
Periscope is a smartphone application that all-ows users to stream live video via their Twitter account. The video usually remains accessible for 24 hours. The police said they were informed by someone watching the strea-m. “We were alerted arou-nd 4:30 pm by a Periscope user who was connected with the victim and told us that she was not well,” a police source said.
Twitter, which bought Periscope in 2015, said it did not comment on individual accounts. Disturbing incidents have become increasingly common on live-streaming services.
