A suicidal teenager was saved after a friend on the Facebook website living in America alerted police.
The 16-year-old boy from Oxford had sent a private message to the girl in Maryland stating that he was going to kill himself.
The friend alerted her mother who contacted local police in America who, through the British Embassy in Washington DC, then raised the alarm with the Metropolitan Police who contacted Thames Valley Police in the early hours of Thursday.
Police staff then searched electoral roll websites and found eight potential addresses for the teenager and dispatched officers to each one.
The boy was found alive but suffering from a drugs overdose and was taken by ambulance to the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford where he made a full recovery.
Oxfordshire police commander Chief Superintendent Brendan O'Dowda told the Oxford Mail newspaper: "When it did find its way to Thames Valley Police, it would have been quite easy for any number of people to decide there wasn't enough information.
"But due to the tenacity and professionalism of a number of people, we managed to pin down a number of addresses, then went through the painful and laborious process of visiting the addresses to find the lad.
"It took up time and effort but it was time and effort absolutely well spent."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article