Did Demi Moore's Twitter Feed Stop a Suicide?
April 3, 2009 — -- Don't discount the power of people who follow stars on Twitter.
A woman who used the micro-blogging network to announce her plans to commit suicide by tweeting actress Demi Moore was later found by authorities and taken in for evaluation after followers of the actress reported the incident to police, who said this is an unprecedented use of the network.
Known only by her Twitter username, "Sandieguy," the Silicon Valley, Calif., resident wrote a message to Moore early Friday morning detailing the way in which she was planning to take her life.
"Getting a knife, a big one that is sharp. Going to cut my arm down the whole arm so it doesn't waste time," Sandieguy wrote at approximately 3 a.m. California time.
Seconds later, Sandieguy followed up with another message reading, "gbye ... gonna kill myself now."
Sandieguy is one of more than 370,000 people who subscribe to follow Moore's real-time updates.
After the original threat was posted by the woman who's Twitter profile placed her in the Silicon Valley area, Moore reposted the message on her own page, saying, "hope you are joking."
Other users quickly sprung into action, flooding the San Jose Police Department with calls reporting the threat.
"We received several calls in regards to the Twitter threat," San Jose Police Department Public Information Officer Jermaine Thomas told ABCNews.com.
"We located the subject and that person was uninjured," Thomas said. "We did take the person into custody for evaluation."
Thomas declined to disclose the identity of the individual but did confirm that she was female. He said Moore had not been in touch with authorities.
Thomas lauded the social-networking site as being a potentially useful tool in future investigations.
"This Twitter concept is so new, this is the first time it's led us to what could have been a very real crime," he said. "This could be yet another tool to find out what's going on out there."
ABCNews.com's e-mail to Moore's publicist to confirm her involvement was not immediately returned. But the actress posted an update on her Twitter feed.
"It is my understanding that the situation was not a joke and that through the collective efforts here, action was taken to provide help," she said.
Moore's husband, actor Ashton Kutcher, also Twittered about the attempted suicide on his own site.
"Wifey reported a suicide attempt based on a at reply tweet she got and saved someones life. the woman is in the hospital now," he wrote.
