{"id":479207,"date":"2026-10-28T11:08:08","date_gmt":"2026-10-28T11:08:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/479207\/"},"modified":"2026-10-28T11:08:08","modified_gmt":"2026-10-28T11:08:08","slug":"wilonsky-a-dallas-suicide-was-om-facebook-and-were-the-worse-for-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/479207\/","title":{"rendered":"Wilonsky: A Dallas suicide was om Facebook, and we\u2019re the worse for it"},"content":{"rendered":"

I watched a young man jump to his death Thursday afternoon. Thousands of others watched it, too. Because it was livestreamed on Facebook.<\/p>\n

I opened the page a few minutes after 2 that afternoon, to retrieve a message, and at the top of my feed was a livestream from atop the Interstate 45-Interstate 20 exchange in southeast Dallas. Smash Da Topic, a breathless crime-news account with more than 1.6 million followers on Facebook alone, had been broadcasting from the location for hours, after it had been reported that a man standing atop his car on the overpass required police intervention<\/a>. SWAT was on the scene. Traffic was backed up for miles.<\/p>\n

At 2:09 p.m., I sent a colleague a link to the livestream, in which a young man \u2014 police would later confirm only that he was in his 20s \u2014 wearing a white shirt was talking to several cops standing nearby but keeping their distance. He appeared to be wiping his nose. I don\u2019t follow Smash Da Topic. But there it was. At the top of my Facebook feed. Demanding I watch.<\/p>\n

I texted my colleague that livestreaming the situation felt \u201cirresponsible.\u201d And only seconds later, the young man turned to his right, toward the camera, then climbed atop the railing, quickly, as though he\u2019d just made the decision and didn\u2019t want to change his mind. He dived headfirst, his arms out, and fell out of frame.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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One officer quickly gathered his gear and walked away. Others stood there, appearing stunned by the horrific, sudden, matter-of-fact conclusion.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Off camera, someone began screaming: \u201cOH GOD OH GOD OH MY GOD.\u201d<\/p>\n

I immediately closed Facebook, then texted some journalists about what had just transpired. A former cops reporter here found the video and watched it to see how the officers responded. After a time, I opened it again, too, to find thousands of comments flooding the feed. Many grieved for the man and his family. Some wondered why the officers didn\u2019t move in to grab the man or set up an inflatable rescue cushion below. A few others typed variations of the same sad, stupid joke, claiming he\u2019d jumped because he was tired of watching the Dallas Cowboys. Because every day there\u2019s some fresh horror.<\/p>\n

\"Traffic<\/p>\n

Traffic was backed up for hours last Thursday along interstates 20 and 45 as Dallas police negotiated with a man atop the freeway interchange.<\/p>\n

KXAS-TV (Channel 5)<\/p>\n

Smash Da Topic left its initial video on Facebook, of the man standing atop his car on the overpass<\/a>. But it eventually removed the entirety of the livestream, according to a note it posted to Facebook Saturday morning<\/a>, because of \u201chow upsetting the footage was.\u201d The note wanted to make it clear: \u201cFacebook did not remove\u201d the video.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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\u201cWhen we\u2019re covering breaking news live in real time, there\u2019s no opportunity to censor or edit what happens as the situation unfolds,\u201d said the note. \u201cThis was an active SWAT situation, and unfortunately, the outcome was not what anyone had hoped for. \u2026 Witnessing something like that in real time is not easy, and it affected us as well. Our intention was never to be insensitive or disrespectful to anyone involved. Our goal has always been to keep our community informed about what\u2019s happening around us.\u201d<\/p>\n

I do not know how livestreaming someone in distress \u2014 a person who can only harm himself and poses no risk to anyone else, someone whose family might not even know their loved one is threatening to jump off an overpass \u2014 is a community service. Nor do I know how Smash Da Topic would answer that: I sent a message Sunday afternoon, hoping to talk about lessons learned from such a bleak moment and received no response, other than a canned answer: \u201cWe try to be as responsive as possible. We’ll get back to you soon.\u201d<\/p>\n

Meta, though, did respond: Monday afternoon, a spokesperson named Sophie Vogel pointed me to the company\u2019s Suicide, Self-Injury, and Eating Disorders policies<\/a>, which have been rewritten numerous times in recent years.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Dallas<\/p>\n

Dallas Police Chief Daniel\u00a0Comeaux said Monday several of the officers involved in last week’s negotiations with the man who jumped from the freeway overpass will need counseling.<\/p>\n

Smiley N. Pool\/Dallas Morning News<\/p>\n

Vogel wrote that \u201cexperts have told us that if someone is saying that they intend to attempt suicide on a live-stream, we should leave the content up for as long as possible because the longer that someone is talking to a camera, the more opportunity there is for a friend or family member to call emergency services.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Which doesn\u2019t apply here. Because this young man \u2014 and his family \u2014 had no say in the matter Thursday. He was not identified, and he did not ask for an audience.<\/p>\n

Vogel also said Facebook doesn\u2019t \u201callow content that shows someone engaged in a suicide attempt or death by suicide.\u201d Such content, she said, is removed \u201cwhenever we become aware of it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dallas Police Chief Daniel Comeaux said Monday he wouldn\u2019t weigh in on the livestreaming issue. Because he won\u2019t win whatever he says. Some will claim he\u2019s clamping down on the public\u2019s right to film and photograph the police. Or they will insist he\u2019s giving permission to broadcast a tragedy.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

The Interstate 20-Interstate 45 interchange, where Dallas police spent hours last week talking to a young man whose jump from the overpass was livestreamed on Facebook.<\/p>\n

Robert Wilonsky\/Staff writer<\/p>\n

\u201cAll I will say is this: When it comes to journalists, everyone needs to understand they have a responsibility to the people who live in Dallas,\u201d Comeaux said. \u201cI have to let you read into what that responsibility is.\u201d<\/p>\n

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The chief would say he spent much of Monday morning speaking with the 20 officers who had spent Thursday trying to talk the young man off the overpass. Many, he said, had read or been told about the online comments saying they hadn\u2019t done enough to keep him from jumping. So much second-guessing.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Comeaux said he told them to stay off the internet, not to read the comments. \u201cBut they\u2019re human,\u201d Comeaux sighed.<\/p>\n

The officers told the chief \u201cthings didn\u2019t make sense, because they thought it was trending in the right direction,\u201d Comeaux said. \u201cThey felt they were gaining ground.\u201d Officers had reached the man\u2019s parents, a girlfriend. He\u2019d been talking for hours with the negotiator, who Comeaux said is taking this especially hard.<\/p>\n

\u201cSeveral officers who were on the scene will need counseling,\u201d Comeaux said. \u201cI don\u2019t think the community realizes that. I think they think officers are robots and move on from this. In the 1990s they told you to rub some dirt on it and go to the next call. But I\u2019ve got a lot of broken employees right now.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Somewhere, too, is a broken family preparing to bury a boy whose private pain became, for a few hours last week, a public spectacle. Which should break us all.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I watched a young man jump to his death Thursday afternoon. Thousands of others watched it, too. Because…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":479208,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[102,104,103,631,1758,95705,89139],"class_list":["post-479207","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-dallas","tag-dallas","tag-dallas-headlines","tag-dallas-news","tag-death","tag-internet","tag-tp-southern-dallas","tag-tp-dallas-police"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/479207","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=479207"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/479207\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/479208"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=479207"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=479207"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=479207"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}