A 14-year-old foster child in Florida broadcast her own suicide on social media Sunday night, police said.
Naika Venant had started a livestream — reportedly on Facebook Live — when she fashioned a noose out of a scarf and hanged herself from the bathroom door of her Miami area home just after 3 a.m., the state’s Department of Children and Families said in a brief incident report.
Efforts to save the girl were thwarted by a series of accidents after a friend reported the two-hour livestream to police and provided them with the wrong Miami address, the Miami Herald reported.
Emergency workers rushed to the wrong house and learned of Naika’s address — where they later found her hanging in the bathroom as her foster parents slept.
The girl was rushed to Jackson North Hospital, where she was pronounced dead.
Her close friend Gerta Telfort described Naika as a good student with lots of charisma.
She said Naika, a seventh-grader at Young Women’s Preparatory Academy, hoped to one day write a book and had started a daily journal. Naika, her mother’s only girl, had a younger brother. It was not clear why she was placed in foster care.
Those who commented on Naika’s Facebook page — which has since been deleted — said she livestreamed her suicide on Facebook Live, the Miami Herald reported.
One comment from a woman claiming to be Naika’s mother read: “I was showing you tough love when you misbehaved.”
It was not officially confirmed that Naika used Facebook Live to broadcast her suicide, but company spokesperson Christine Chen said Facebook aims to interrupt livestreams that go against community standards “as quickly as possible.”
“We also suggest people contact law enforcement or emergency services themselves if they become aware of something where the authorities can help,” Chen said in a statement to the Miami Herald.
A Miami Gardens police spokesman was not immediately available for comment.
Naika’s tragic suicide occurs just weeks after a Georgia child hanged herself in a 40-minute live video. Katelyn Nicole Davis, 12, of Cedartown, posted her chilling death on a site called Live.me.