Three patrols cars full of Bibb County sheriff’s deputies arrived at the teen’s residence after being alerted of the video stream, with Sheriff David Davis telling the Macon Telegraph, "It’s a good thing that the people watching this called it in … Those people did the right thing."
Medics arrived as well, and the teen was taken to the hospital and pronounced to be in good condition on Wednesday.
"We are a voyeuristic society," Davis said. "It’s really troubling that you have things like this, to have access to people being able to put something up live, as it happens … We see more often that it ends in regret."
Atlanta saw this regret in December, when a 12-year-old girl streamed her suicide online after claiming a family member sexually abused her. She was dead by time authorities arrived.
A number of violent incidents have been livestreamed on Facebook of late. In April, 40 people watched as a teenage girl in Chicago was raped by two teenage boys, though none of the users alerted law enforcement.
The girl subsequently faced harassment and bullying from neighborhood kids and was forced to leave her home to stay with a relative.
Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson said at the time, "It just disgusts me that people could look at those videos and not pick up the phone and dial 911.”
Other livestreamed suicides, from Alabama to Mumbai, have shown up on Facebook over the past few months.
Steve Stephens, a Cleveland, Ohio, man who shot and killed an elderly man at random in April, recorded the killing and posted it to Facebook as well.
