Latest teen suicides bring number to 13 in Welsh town

From the Telegraph (Jan 24):

Under a sky that is an unappealing mix of muddy brown, inged with grey, an old man treads carefully past the charity shops along Nolton Street, in the centre of Bridgend. A couple of gloomy-faced teenagers, in Reebok Classics and hooded tops, hang out in front of the cut-price fashion stores, but otherwise the place is deserted. It is 9am and a thick mist swathes parts of this small town on the edge of the South Wales valleys, reducing visibility to a few feet.

It is a ghost town in more ways than you could imagine.

Natasha Randall was the seventh young person in Bridgend to take their own life in recent yearsOver the past year, Bridgend has been stunned by the suicides of seven of its young people.

Yesterday morning every person in the Aroma Café was poring over a newspaper, absorbing details of the latest tragedy.

Seventeen-year-old Natasha Randall, or Tasha as she was known, hanged herself in her bedroom a week ago today as her father, Kelvin, and stepmother, Katrina, busied themselves downstairs. Her smiling face beams out of the pages as she makes a mock gangster gesture with her hands. Behind her, her good friend Liam Clarke does the same. Liam, 20, is also dead. He hanged himself the day after Boxing Day.

Liam was also a friend of Gareth Morgan. They both drank at a local pub, The West House. The 27-year-old father of one was found dead, having taken his own life on January 5. Before Gareth, Liam and Natasha there was Zachary Barnes, an angel-faced boy of 17 who was discovered hanging from a washing line at a block of flats in August last year.

Thomas Davies, 20, hanged himself from a tree on February 20, 2007. It was just two days before the funeral of his close schoolfriend David Dilling, 19, who had also hanged himself earlier that month. David's best friend was 18-year-old Dale Crole, who went missing in September 2006. His badly decomposed body was found four months later on January 5, 2007 - a year to the day that Gareth committed suicide. Many in Bridgend wonder if they have yet seen the end.

Indeed, within 24 hours of Natasha's death two of her friends attempted to take their lives, though fortunately both failed.

The fact that all seven of those who died were somehow linked has raised questions about a suicide pact. Some have even gone so far as to propose the chilling theory that the propose were part of an internet suicide cult.

Several of those who have died had pages on Bebo, the social networking website, and had posted messages on each other's ''memorial walls" - virtual books of condolence.

The truth, say residents of Bridgend, is less sinister, yet no less bleak. As one girl I spoke to outside Bridgend College told me yesterday: "Suicide is just what people do here because there is nothing else to do."

From the Guardian:

Detectives investigating the latest in a series of young suicides in the Bridgend area of south Wales are to re-examine 13 deaths - including four cases officially closed.

Police will look for similarities amid concern that some or all of the unexplained deaths could be connected, sources close to the investigation told the Guardian.

In a statement, South Wales police said they would be "reviewing a number of cases of sudden deaths ... We are not reinvestigating the deaths but we are looking at any possible links between them."

From the International Herald Tribune:

BRIDGEND, Wales: Seven young people have apparently killed themselves in the last 12 months in this South Wales town that once thrived on coal mining. Adults are
desperate to make it stop.

The rash of suicides — and front-page news stories about other young people whose suicides were prevented by last-minute intervention — seems to be the only topic under discussion in the cafes and shops of this town of 40,000.

"People are saying it might be some sort of cult, but we don't know, " said Luke Wills, 25. "There is something amiss, but we don't know what."

Police say there appears to be no common link between the deaths. But at least one newspaper published a photograph of two of the dead together, fueling speculation of suicide pacts struck among friends linked by Internet social networking sites.

"It's nothing like that," said Alicia Johns, a friend of 17-year-old Natasha Randall, who was found dead last week. "What people are saying is not true. But people get down and they do it. It's all from the same group, I knew these people."

In addition to Randall, six young men between the ages of 17 and
27 have also been found dead in the area. Authorities have ruled three of the cases to be suicides; the others are still under investigation, but suicide is suspected.

The deaths have contributed to a mood as grim as the nearly perpetual damp mists that shroud Bridgend in the long winter months. Surrounded by small green hills, the small commercial city empties quickly at nightfall, giving the town a desolate — and dangerous — feel.

From News.com.au:

USERS of social networking websites have been accused of "romanticising death" after the seemingly copycat suicides of seven young people in a small town in Britain.

British police have denied media reports of an internet suicide cult, but said they were investigating the computer of a 17-year-old girl who was found dead last week in Bridgend in southern Wales.

Natasha Randall was the seventh young person from Bridgend and surrounding areas to be found hanged since January last year. Most of the seven, all aged under 21, were known to each other and were users of the social networking website Bebo, The Times reported.

Bridgend's Labour MP Madeleine Moon said she was concerned about a string of memorial pages that appeared on Bebo and other websites after the suicides and showed "some sort of romanticism of death".

"What is concerning is that you're getting internet bereavement walls. That's not going to help anyone," she said.

"What people need is not to go into a virtual world of the internet to deal with emotional problems... They need to stay very much in this real world and talk to real people."

Visitors have left hundreds of messages on Ms Randall's Bebo profile and on a memorial website called Gone Too Soon, which allows bereaved friends and family to create a profile for loved ones who have passed away.

Visitors to Gone Too Soon profiles can leave messages and virtual candles on profiles and view pictures of the deceased.

Police said they had not found a direct link between the seven suicides, but one officer said it was possible the memorial pages and Bebo played a part in the deaths.