Someone I don't know may have committed suicide.

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
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A gentleman I don’t know has apparently committed suicide and I’m unsure of what to do.

He posted on craigslist Rants and Raves last Thursday (the 17th) that he was going to kill himself on Friday morning. Of course, a bunch of people encouraged it. He had problems with his family, etc., so I posted that perhaps he should try to get back in touch, try to fix things, and use them for support and help. The next day he posted saying he had called his brother and was told to f*ck off, but also mentioned in the post what his brother’s title was (COO), what industry he worked in and where he lived. I googled-fu’d and found someone I thought might be his brother, so I posted ‘Does your last name start with O’ and your brother’s first start with W?’

He emailed me through craigslist indicating that I was correct, and we started talking. He wanted to know how I knew and I stayed elusive, playing off the fact that maybe someone does care about him and perhaps he should re-think his suicide plans. He kept postponing the day he was going to kill himself while I kept trying to get information out of him. To do what with, I wasn’t sure at that point.

On Friday the SO and I left to go camping for the weekend, so I only had my cell internet and was talking to him through gmail and facebook. He wouldn’t tell me how he was going to do it, just that he had to ‘prepare stuff’. He kept giving small hints (‘Do you work at the DI?’ I cant’ figure out what the ‘DI’ is still!) but also avoided answering anything that would give me a clue as to who he was (I also couldn’t find an email address/phone for his brother). I contemplated calling the cops but didn’t have any useful information to give them.

Finally, on Saturday, he told me his first name and added me as a friend on Facebook (he tracked me down through my email address which totally freaked me out), and kept asking how I knew him. I tried to play it off like he shouldn’t do it because obviously someone (me) cared about him. I asked what he was going to do, and he wouldn’t answer. I didn’t hear from him for about 12 hours and thought he had done it, but then I emailed him and asked where he was. He told me he had driven to Saskatoon, Sask and asked if he could call me. I told him no, there is no way I’m giving him my phone number, sorry, but to keep talking to me. I was trying to get him to give me more specifics about where he was and what he was going to do. All he told me is that he’d emailed his family saying bye and that they’d never find his body.

His last email to me was at about 3 pm on Saturday, saying goodbye, basically, and that he’d do it at 11 pm that night. I emailed him a few times since then asking him to just think about it for a couple more days and to let me know if he’s still alive. Haven’t heard from him since.

I called the police both here (in Calgary) and in Saskatoon. All I had at the time was his name and birth date. He doesn’t have a vehicle registered in his name in either province, so the police couldn’t find an address. Because of this, they wouldn’t even search, especially since I don’t really ‘know’ this guy.

A bit more digging the last few days and I think I’ve found his cell number, home number and address.

What should I do?

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I would call the police back, provide them with the information you found and ask that they do a wellness check (I think thats what it is called) at his residence. Beyond that, I’m not sure what else you can do.

Man, what a horrible situation. :confused:

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Jesus, aren’t you a passive aggressive son of a beehive? You take a craigslist posting, track down a guy 'til you know who he is, confront him with the information, then get all skeeved out when he finds you back? In addition, you’re concerned about him killing himself, but you do nothing except email and text with him, refuse to take his call (even though presumably you believe his suicide threat to be legitimate(visiting might have been a bit much, I admit)) whereby you might have been able to more accurately gauge his actual mental state or at least get more information on who he is or where he is to refer the proper authorities to him, and now you’re worried that he might have gone ahead and done it? And your response to all of this is to post about it here? Why do you care, from what you’ve told us you’re treating him like a temporary diversion. If he’s dead, oh well, find another one.
As to your last question:

Here’s a crazy idea: Why don’t you, oh, I dunno, give him a call and see how he’s doing?

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Wait, if you were talking to him on facebook before he friended you…how is that even possible?

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My assumption is probably because he’s batshit insane. That said, many people still feel a humanitarian pull to offer some kind of assistance when a fellow human being flips their shit, even if they don’t want the shit-flipper to have their personal information.

I’ve called the police out of concerned for someones safety because they were wandering in and out of traffic, waving their arms and yelling at stop signs.

This doesn’t mean I want to go have lunch with them.

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IME truly suicidal people don’t threaten to kill themselves for days on random message boards. The people making a huge deal out of threatening to kill themselves generally are the ones that don’t have any intention of killing themselves at all.* You probably don’t want to get further involved with this guy except to maybe send him some information about places in his area where he can find a therapist to talk to about his problems.
*This will not always be true. It may be the polar opposite of your experiences. I can only speak of those people I have known in similar situations and the ones that couldn’t shut up about suicide were the ones who wouldn’t ever dream of actually killing themselves.

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So you dial *67 first, although that’s the part that really jumps out at me from the OP. The OP tracks down this guy but is horrified by a quid pro quo? Hypocritical.

Or you call his brother and sad “I know you don’t know me, but I’ve been talking to your brother online and I’m worried that he might hurt himself”.

Or you call the police back with the new information (as you suggested).

One thing I’m sure of, the thing not to do is come onto a message board and wring your hands about it, “Oh woe is me, someone I’ve never met is in danger”.

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How?

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I shall elaborate.

Exactly. I’m a 27 year old female, he’s a 39 year old male. He’s suicidal/depressed and I’m not about to give out my information to someone in that condition that I only know online. I asked for HIS phone number and he wouldn’t give it to me. Unfortunately, that’s how it is in this day and age. Yes, it’s sad that he wants to kill himself, yes I want to help a stranger, NO I’m not putting myself in potential danger to do that.

I wasn’t creeped out that he found me, I was creeped out by the way he announced it (“By the way, nice half marathon time in the HSBC race the other weekend.”).

I can’t find any reliable contact information for his brother online. His company website doesn’t even have a head office phone number listed, just general inquiries. Besides that, the guy has made it clear that the brother doesn’t care. He also told me that he had emailed his family to tell them off and say goodbye, so I assume they are aware of the situation.

When I called the police on Sunday they said that since I didn’t actually know him, even if I did have his address, I can’t give them permission to access the house. However, now that I have his address, I may call anonymously and just indicate that this person is suicidal and let them handle it by whatever protocol they have for situations like that.

How did I find this new info? I found it last night after I sent a message to one of his two other friends on facebook asking for contact info. All she had was an email address. I searched in google and found a phone number from an ad he had posted, from which I found a physical address.

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Got to agree with you,he sounds like someone into attention seeking,emotional blackmail and control games.

If he WAS serious and it really does’nt sound like it he’d go ahead and do it anyway without any reference to a stranger on the internet,in fact he’d much more likely contact Samaritans,the down side to that is that as they are hearing your voice its not as easy to playact the part.

Forget him, the world is full of selfpitying drama Queens out to get something from the soft hearted(particulary young women).

It sounds like the people who know him IRL are wise to his BS which is why he’s trying it on in Cyber space.

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What’s wrong with that? People ask for advice on this board about all sort of problems.(it seems there never will be any issue about which I’ll agree with you the slightest bit).

Apart from that, there’s no particular reason to assume that this man is just an attention-seeker. Maybe he is, maybe he isn’t. There’s no way to tell.

And I’m not sure how the fact the OP cares for a stranger opens her to criticism. She should rather be lauded.

As for what she should do, apart from calling (and I can easily understand why she doesn’t want to do that), I assume that at this point the best thing to do is to call the local police and give them all the details she has.
Note that I’ve been in a quite similar situation years ago, except that it was about a very serious crime instead of a suicide. I called the local (Canadian) police and it did prevent said crime (even though it took asking a Canadian online friend to call too to make sure the police would take care of the issue), so I’m not going to advise against taking at least such a step. Actually, I generally always follow the line “in doubt, call the police/emergency services/firemen/whatever first, think later”. I never regretted it, but one sure could regret not doing so at times.
Maybe the OP could also seek advise from whatever “suicide-line” exists in her country. I doubt they could help much, but it doesn’t cost much to try, either.

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You have no way to know that he is really suicidal. For all you know, he’s a rapist or serial killer and he finds his victims by going on to Craig’s List and looking for tender hearted women who want to “help” him and play rescuer. Short of that, though, the world is full of manipulative types who love to find someone like you over the internet and play games and bleed them dry.

I get wanting to help people, but doing so requires setting some personal boundaries if you want to be safe about it. You’re playing a very dangerous game here.

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It’s craigslist. Proceed with extreme caution. It’s nice you want to help and all, but the chance that this guy is faking for whatever purpose is high.

Now, if this was Japan, where posting suicide notices on anonymous message boards is all the rage, then I’d be more concerned.

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Update: I’ve been able to contact one of his old high school friends through Facebook and she seems to have more resources then I do for contacting his family. I haven’t heard anything back from her yet though.

My hubby pulled a body out of the river on Saturday (don’t worry, it’s his job) and my first thought was if it was him or not. Horrible.