Josh Hafner

USA TODAY

A teenager allegedly live-streamed video of her own suicide Tuesday as she threw herself under a commuter train in suburban Paris.

French authorities announced Wednesday an investigation into the death of the 19-year-old who reportedly broadcasted moments of her final hours using the mobile app Periscope, France Info reported.



Police seized the woman's phone after the suicide at the Egly station south of Paris, according to France Info, where video surveillance cameras also captured the suicide. An autopsy, toxicology and drug tests will take place in the coming days.

Prosecutor Eric Lallement disclosed that the teen, whose name has not been released, sent a text message to a friend of her one-time boyfriend in the hours before she killed herself.



“In the text message, she mentions violence and a rape that her companion inflicted on her and claims she is ending her days because of the harm that the young man had done to her,” Lallement said.

In her own messages, the woman detailed her personal life and the difficult relationship with her former boyfriend, he added.

On Tuesday, the woman live-streamed for more two hours on Periscope across five sessions. Her final session lasted 29 minutes and appeared to take place moments before her suicide, according to Lallement.

In those broadcasts leading up to her death, the girl conversed with Periscope viewers about her hobbies while sitting on a couch and playing with her cat, according to the New York Times. She said her name was Océane.

Later, in the final recording at 4:29 p.m., she jumped under a train on the C line of a train system referred to as the R.E.R., the Times reported. The screen goes dark during one excerpt, with a voice five minutes later saying, "I am under the train with the victim; I need to move the victim."

A spokesperson for Twitter, which purchased Periscope in 2015, told Le Point the company does not comment on individuals' accounts.

The video was taken down from Periscope, though excerpts later appeared on YouTube with the suicide scene itself obscured.



Paris-based technology analyst Thomas Husson told the Times that it's difficult to prevent people from using live-streaming applications like Periscope to show intimate glimpses of their lives—both good and bad.

“It would be very difficult to prevent such events (as this suicide) from happening,” he told the newspaper. “We now live in a dictatorship of real time.”

The French case is only the latest one linked to Periscope.

Last month in Ohio, a 17-year-old woman was raped by a man with whom she had been drinking and her 18-year-old friend live-streamed the attack on the social media app, prompting a prosecutor to file a rape and kidnapping indictment.

According to Tech Crunch, Periscope users stream more than 350,000 hours of video on the app each day.

Contributing: The Associated Press