The Register® — Biting the hand that feeds IT

Feeds

You've got mail: I'm going to kill myself

Dumped lad emails goodbye to his ex

  • print
  • alert

Regcast training : Hyper-V 3.0, VM high availability and disaster recovery

If it has done nothing else for humanity, email has given us another medium to write suicide notes in. An effective method of communication, albeit a less dramatic medium than a letter scrawled in one's own blood.

This lessening of drama did not deter jilted teenager Philip Dowden from announcing his intentions to his ex-fiancée in an email.

The 16 year old sent a message saying it would be "unthinkably unbearable" to go on after the relationship ended. He then took a double-barrelled shotgun and shot himself in the head, dying instantly.

His ex did not receive the email until he had died, and said in a statement that he had threatened suicide when they had split up on a previous occasion.

The Sun reports that the suicidal sixteen year-old had spoken to a female friend shortly before he killed himself. She said: "He said that if they were apart for seven days he would kill himself. He said that he would use a gun and even that he would take it into school."

An inquest ruled that his death was suicide. ®

Related Stories

Korean Duo do each other in
Computer engineer commits phone suicide
Japanese couple kill themselves after suicide website meet

Cloud storage: Lower cost and increase uptime

More from The Register

Thanks, NSA: Amazon sales of Orwell's 1984 rise 9,500%
Citizens of Oceania bone up on the new reality
 breaking news
BBC lied to Parliament about doomed £100m IT monster, thunder MPs
Axed DMI ballooned and burst while watchdogs sang Kumbaya
Microsoft to open Windows Stores inside 600 Best Buy locations
Product showcases 'must be seen to be believed'
 breaking news
Author Iain (M) Banks falls to cancer at 59
Misses the release of his final work
 breaking news
What did the Lehman Brothers implosion look like to a techie?
Insider tells all about the Gnab Gib at Lehmans
It's official: 'tweet' an English word – not just in the avian sense
If the Oxford English Dictionary says it is so, then it is so
 breaking news
The only Waze is Google: Ad giant tipped to gobble map app 'for $1.3bn'
Pac-Man-satnav-ish upstart in bidding war with Apple, Facebook
 breaking news
1-in-10 e-tomes 'are self-published'... most are 'rubbish' says book ed
Publishing man scoffs at go-it-alone writers, ursines still fouling in forests
 breaking news