28-yr-old man, 16-yr-old girl commit suicide by inhaling helium

What a waste. Sounds like another dysfunctional family with the girl searching for a father figure.

WTF is wrong with the 28 yo guy with a 16 yo girl! This sickening to think of a mature man with a teenager.

He wasted his life for no good reason and dragged a young girls life down the drain also.

Sadly suicide pacts show desperation and sadly unhappy people and can happen to any culture and any people. I am very sorry to hear of this.

Yeah,this is pretty nuts, but it is not uncommon for teenage girls to have boyfriends in their thirties or forties in Japan. I knew one girl who was dating her father's best friend (secretly of course). It seems pretty odd for young girls, but I am in my 50's and my GF is in her early 30's. However, we have no plans to die together. Our plans are exactly the opposite.

I don't understand how you'd let your child come under the influence of an adult who wasn't trusted as a guardian. Let children be children and adults stay away. No predators. No manipulators. No wrinkled olds near children. Educate your children to be pedophile / abuser aware.

To Yong Yang, when i was 28 in Japan I had a 17-year Japanese girlfriend. You have to realise that girls that age can come on fairly strong and it's not just 'dirty old men taking advantage'.

16 and 28? Why??

Decades of living yet to do, but instead you end it so young?

I don't understand how you'd let your child come under the influence of an adult who wasn't trusted as a guardian.

Its possible they were against him contacting her which is why they committed suicide together. That's how it would happen in a dorama anyway.

@Ryo, well, you wouldn't be anywhere near my children, one they'd be educated and two I'd be educating you. You guide a child, don't take advantage of a totally unequal equation.

This all goes back to the argument of when a child becomes an adult.

I am sure we have all met older teens who were very mature (physically sexually or mentally). I am also sure we have met older 20 year olds who still haven't figured out their arse from their elbow.

Regardless of personal feelings, the law of the land has this pegged at 20 years. If they had just waited four years, they could have had a very different life.

You have to realise that girls that age can come on fairly strong and it's not just 'dirty old men taking advantage'.

Nah, it's also 20 something year old guys who clearly can't related to women their age so they lust after young and naive girls.

You have to realise that girls that age can come on fairly strong and it's not just 'dirty old men taking advantage

Have a chat with a 20-something Japanese guy and after he has shown you all his photos of AKB and told you about all his perverted fantasies with junior high school girls you might understand why young Japanese women chase older men.

Have a chat with a 20-something Japanese guy and after he has shown you all his photos of AKB and told you about all his perverted fantasies with junior high school girls you might understand why young Japanese women chase older men.

Not much different from the 20-something, or 30,40-something Japanese women that worship Arashi though.

Sad story. Parents faulty for sure. Life is not high valued here. 16 year old, that girl understands what she was doing. He did not force her by the way apparently. Long life to life.

I'm always curious about what they would talk about when together. one, his life is well established who he is, the other, sadly, didn't even know who she was yet. so sad. everything to live for, but their eyes were closed to the world.

16 and 28 isn't much different from 18 and 30 or 20 and 32 or 50 and 62. Just 12 years.

I thought we all inhaled helium as kids to make our voices go funny...

16 and 28 isn't much different from 18 and 30 or 20 and 32 or 50 and 62. Just 12 years.

Oh, but it is. At 16, girls are still growing, in the midst of puberty, and all hormonal and crazy. By 20 they have started to calm down. At 16, all they know is school. At 20, they are starting to see the world. The difference between 16 and 20 is so much different to that between 20 and 32, and even more different than that between 50 and 62.

The older we get, the less that 12 years matters. But at 16, that 12 years is 3/4 the girls life, and is a huge, huge difference.

I didn't know helium could be deadly.

On a separate note:

Nah, it's also 20 something year old guys who clearly can't related to women their age so they lust after young and naive girls.

Have a chat with a 20-something Japanese guy and after he has shown you all his photos of AKB and told you about all his perverted fantasies with junior high school girls you might understand why young Japanese women chase older men.

Not much different from the 20-something, or 30,40-something Japanese women that worship Arashi though.

Really????? ...are moderators even reading this totally unrelated jabber?

TahoochiJul. 09, 2014 - 02:20AM JST I didn't know helium could be deadly.

Any of the "noble gases" group (which are inert) are effective for this method of suicide. The reason it is favoured it because it is painless.

Asphyxiation is normally painful because the body doesn't (as people think) monitor oxygen levels, instead it monitors carbon dioxide (CO2) levels. Normally when people are asphyxiating (though strangulation, drowning, hanging, etc.) the CO2 levels build up, turning cells acidic and triggering a mass of warning signals that cause panic, pain and other defensive responses.

When inhaling inert gases the CO2 leaves the body as normal, thus bypassing all the normal warnings and defenses, but no oxygen enters the system. As noted before, the body doesn't monitor oxygen levels, just CO2 levels, so this goes largely unnoticed by the body until the person starts to feel dizzy and passes out in under a minute (sometimes as little as 10 seconds) and then dies in another 4 to 10 minutes. As a result this method of suicide requires ridiculously small quantities of helium, enough for a 10 minute breathing supply at the most. When I was a kid you could buy small pressurized canisters of helium that had enough helium for a dozen balloons... today the cans you buy are likely to only contain enough for 2 balloons at most. I suspect the reason for this is that people abused the old canisters to commit suicide.

Pilots flying at very high altitudes, for example in military JETs, where there is insufficient oxygen, but plenty of other gases, experience this phenomenon, and are trained to detect the

P.S. 28 year old guy, 16 year old girl? If it was a consensual relationship I really don't see a problem. I strongly suspect that all the gossiping and disapproving looks may have been a large factor in them deciding to commit suicide.

If life has taught me anything then it is that if two people of legal age are in a consensual relationship then it is NONE of my business what they get up to. I don't know them, I don't know who pursued whom, and I am in no position to judge them.

My condolences to both of their families.

Stranger, now I find myself agreeing with you!

Strangerland

You may be right but can we guarantee that every female 16-year-old is at the same level of maturity etc? Perhaps this girl has 2 or 3 siblings who are much older than her. In such a case, the youngest often 'grows up' far more quickly than his or her peers.