On Mon, 6 Jan 1997, Howard C. Berkowitz wrote:
Thanks to everyone who responded. I was eventually able to reach one of the providers, who was able to identify the callers through logs, and passed the information to the local emergency people. The patient is now under treatment, and did not take a lethal dose.
I'd just like to point out the similarity between this event and the use of the phone company to track down suicide callers. This reminds me of several 40's or 50's B&W movies with people running down banks of relays looking for the connection. I suspect that as the use of the Internet as a communications tool pervades our culture more deeply these events will occur with increased frequency.
This is just one more good reason for every provider to have a 24/7 NOC service even if it just gets call-forwarded to someone asleep in bed.
Add to this that this is the second time in 6 months I have heard of a such an incident where the net was usefull in stopping this. Reminds me of the time a guy walked into our offices and turned over the handgun he had been toying around with the night before because one of our staff convinced him not to use it.