Internet friends log on to suicide note

ALBUQUERQUE (KRQE) - Facebook friends of Jason McCoy who sign on to their social-networking Web pages Wednesday morning found a long message from the Albuquerque man announcing his intent to kill himself.

In the farewell note posted on their Facebook Walls McCoy, 33, told friends and family he recently had lost his job, was losing his home to foreclosure and had been kicked out of the home where he had been staying.

"By the time any of you read this message, I most surely am no longer alive," he wrote in the note posted at 1:45 a.m.

Later in the morning as friends logged into their Facebook accounts and discovered McCoy's message about a dozen of them contacted the Albuquerque Police Department, APD spokesman John Walsh told KRQE News 13. Officers dispatched to McCoy's home didn't find him, he said.

However a short time later police received a 911 call from a woman saying there was a man lying in a nearby street with a gun. It was McCoy who had shot himself, Walsh said.

Media reports from around the nation and from foreign countries indicate increasing numbers of people posting online their intent to kill themselves.

"We're definitely seeing that people are willing to share more of themselves on a Wall on Facebook than they might in conversation with someone or with a group of people because of the indirectness," Jeremy Jaramillo with the AGORA Crisis Center said.

Jaramillo said people reaching out this way may actually be a good thing if others recognize what is happening.

"If that allows us to see a window into someone's mind when they are feeling depressed or suicidal, and we know the signs and are willing to take action, that can be a helpful thing," he said.

McCoy's friends did try to help, but it was too late.

In most cases a suicide note is just the last of many signs left by a person contemplating suicide, according to Jaramillo. That's why it's important for people to recognize these signs and act quickly, he said.

Jaramillo said when someone loses something so big in his life it should be a sign to his friends that he may need help and support.

To learn the signs of suicide, or it you are having suicidal thoughts or know someone who, the AGORA crisis line can be reached daily from 9 a.m. to midnight at (505) 277-3013 or 1-800-HELP-1NM. A walk-in center at 1716 Las Lomas NE on the University of New Mexico campus is open Monday-Friday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.