Nia Vardalos, Demi Moore intervene after Florida teen’s suicide threat

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Actress Nia Vardalos says she was one of the people who, after seeing a suicide threat retweeted on Demi Moore‘s Twitter feed, called a prevention hot line early Friday morning and alerted authorities to an 18-year-old in distress.
Florida police intervened, and the teen was taken into protective custody for psychiatric evaluation, the Orlando Sentinel reports.

After creating his Twitter account Thursday, the teen sent his first message: ‘I have messed up my life bad. I’m thinking about killing myself.’ His other three tweets were directed at Demi Moore, whose @mrskutcher account has almost 2.6 million followers; Moore responded to the first message, ‘R U rlly asking 4 help?’

Because of how she formatted her reply, the message was visible to all her followers.

Vardalos then directed a message at the teen: ‘[P]lease call 1 800 SUICIDE. I’m on the phone with them right now. They are waiting to talk to you.’ A caller who identified herself as Nia told a dispatcher that she’d seen the threat on Moore’s feed. The ‘My Big Fat Greek Wedding’ actress, with more than 33,000 followers on @niavardalos, later urged people not to pull hoaxes on this sort of thing.

According to the police report, the teen was found sitting at his computer desk crying; he admitted sending the messages and said he ‘did not know what to do with himself without help.’ His mother told police he’d been ‘very emotional’ lately.

He was taken into protective custody for psychiatric evaluation.

-- Christie D’Zurilla

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