Late yesterday afternoon, divers pulled a body from Bangkok’s Chao Phraya River believed to belong to a girl that jumped from Rama VIII bridge in a Facebook Live clip on Jan. 2.
Police think it could be Nittaya Sawatdiwan, 18, who was the young woman in the sad viral clip, reported Thai PBS.
The body was recovered near Pinklao Bridge, about a kilometer from where the clip was filmed.
Facebook has come under scrutiny in the past year after the site’s live video function was used to publicly broadcast suicide, self-harm, assault, and even murder. The site announced in October of last year that, while they can’t monitor each piece of content, they did create a program that analyzes live video content and that they hired 3,000 new employees to manually monitor, reported the New York Post.
In Thailand, a few horrific cases have drawn media attention worldwide last year. A Phuket man hung his daughter and then himself on Facebook live on April 2017. Four months later, a Thai woman threatened to do the same when her husband didn’t pick up the phone. In November, a man in Buriram live-streamed his suicide attempt and was rescued.
In the most recent case, police said that the clothes on the body are similar to what Nittaya wore in the video — denim shorts and a black top. The body was sent to Siriraj Hospital for identification and autopsy.
Since the clip a few days ago, it has come to light that Nittaya is from Ranong province.
What happened late on New Year’s Day is that she was visibly drunk and asked a moto-taxi driver, Pattharadanai Noomsrinart, to take her to Rama VIII bridge. Once there, she turned on her Facebook Live video and asked him to make a video for her in exchange for THB500 (US$15).
She hands him her phone, removes her shoes and stands on the railing. In the five-minute video, a Thai song about heartbreak plays in the background and for several minutes as she simply sits silently on the edge of the bridge and occasionally sips beer from a bottle.
Three minutes in, she turns to face the river, and the driver says “Sit carefully” in Thai.
About 30 seconds later, she climbs down, preparing to jump, and he says, “Don’t disappear down there.” When she jumps, he exclaims with surprise and the video ends.
Only a few hours before she jumped off the bridge, she posted a video to Facebook in which she is crying and talked about a “bad man.” In it, she vaguely said, “Who wants me to tell a story of this man? It’s so bad. This man wore a mask of goodness. He told me that he was good.”
Two others Facebook posts made that day suggested she was hurt and heartbroken.
Pol. Lt. Gen. Sompong Chingduang, deputy commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, said police were considering pressing charges against moto-taxi driver Pattharadanai since it is illegal under Section 374 of the Criminal Code to fail to help a person in danger. If found guilty, the punishment is a maximum of one month imprisonment and/or a THB10,000 (USD$310) fine.
If you are considering harming yourself, please reach out for help. Assistance is available around the clock from the Mental Health Department’s 1323 hotline (for Thai speakers) or the Samaritans of Thailand at 02-713-6793 (for Thai speakers), and 02-713-6791 (for English speakers).
