A teenage girl from Gierałtowice municipality (Silesian Voivodeship) read an online post saying that a young man in Australia was planning to commit suicide. The girl told her mom about it, and the woman called the local police station in Knurów. The police, in turn, called their counterparts in Perth, who found the troubled teenager and saved his life.
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The teenager from Poland was communicating with other members of a closed online support group. There, she found a post by one of the chat users - an Australian woman wrote about a young boy in Australia who was planning to commit suicide. According to the message, there was no time to lose and every minute counted.
It turned out the information from the chat was true - a teenage Australian boy living in Perth, the capital of Western Australia (more than 13,000 kilometers from Poland), was in need of urgent help. Worried by the terrifying news, the Polish teenager told her mom about the situation. The woman decided to call local police.
Urgent request
Deputy Inspector Marek Słomski of County Police in Gliwice said the duty officer had immediately launched adequate procedures.
"No matter if it's Sosnowiec, or Australia, or any other corner of the world. We're acting the same way and with the same seriousness," the officer stressed.
He added they had notified criminal police, who urgently collected all information that could have proved useful in locating the Australian teenager: IP numbers, pseudonyms and addresses.
"We've carried out necessary operational work. Once we had gathered necessary information, we urgently requested help from the International Police Cooperation Bureau of National Police Headquarters in Warsaw, who then immediately reached out to Australian Police in Canberra," Słomski said.
Help arrived on time
After notifying their Australian counterparts, Polish police officers could only await news from the Southern Hemisphere. And, according to Gliwice police, the news arrived really quick.
"Officers from Canberra referred the case to the police in Perth, who shortly after found the teenager at extreme risk of death. They administered first aid and handed him over to paramedics. Thanks to that the boy could be saved," the police officer added.
Źródło: TVN24 News in English, tvn24.pl
Źródło zdjęcia głównego: Google Street View