A Twitter user who had police in Toronto scrambling to help her as she counted down the minutes until she supposedly planned to kill herself has turned out to be a hoax.
Worse, police are saying it could actually be a sick marketing stunt pulled off to promote the release of a new album by pop star Ariana Grande.
User ButerasCandiess, who calls herself Emma, attracted the attention of social-media savvy police in Toronto on Wednesday when she began sending out horrifying messages like ‘I’ll take pills and kill myself’ and ‘I already buy the pills. Is there anybody who cares?’
Police do not believe Grande or anyone around her had anything to do with the Twitter hoax, nor they believe she had any knowledge of it.
Sickening: The Twitter user sent out messages counting down the minutes until she was supposedly planning to down pills and commit suicide
Superfan? Police say they don’t believe Nickelodian star Ariana Grande had anything to do with the hoax, but rather it was the work of a disturbed superfan
The Toronto Star reports that investigators now believe that the Twitter user’s cry for help may have actually been a ploy to draw attention to the release of a 20-year-old Nickelodeon star Ariana’s new album – ‘Yours Truly.’
A nurse in Toronto altered offices to the distressing Twitter feed and they spent several hours Thursday trying to track down the user and get her help.
The incident came to a head when the user began to count down the minutes until she was supposedly was going to take pills and kill herself.
‘Please tell about me to everyone..I want to see how many people care for me,’ she wrote.
Threats: A nurse in Toronto spotted the user’s tweets like these and alerted police
The user later admitted that she had made up the entire incident. Police found that the user was masking the real origin of her IP address
Dozens of people tweeted messages to her as she sent out horrifying tweets about her intention to kill herself.
‘3 minutes… don’t forget to tell ariana about me & trend #RIPbuterascandiess don’t forget that i love you,’ the user wrote.
Police contacted Twitter, which revealed that the IP address for the user was based in Greece. However, they later found that the user was deliberately using software to mask the IP address and that the person typing to messages could be anywhere.
On Friday the user admitted the entire stunt was a hoax.
‘SO SORRY IT WAS A HOAX I WAS SAD AND I WANTED TO TELL SOMETHING SORRY,’ she wrote.
Police are now searching for the culprit. If the user turns out to be Canadian, she could be charged with public mischief.
Source:https://www.dailymail.co.uk
