Teen Kills Herself After Uploading 'Racist' Image

A photo that started out as an Instagram joke meant to be shared among a few friends led a British teen to kill herself after more people saw it than she intended, the Telegraph reports. The problem with the pic taken by Phoebe Connop: She was afraid it would be seen as racist by those she didn't know well. The 16-year-old, an aspiring gymnast, had uploaded an edited pic to Instagram, showing herself with darkened skin and donning a headscarf, and telling friends that's how she'd need to show up if she ever met her boyfriend's parents.

The Sun notes that the "boyfriend" was really an "Asian lad" with whom Phoebe had been corresponding for a while, not a boy she had even met in person. But a mortified Phoebe, reportedly scared that negative reaction she'd been hearing about her pic would lead her to be permanently branded a racist by the Asian community, took her own life in her family home on July 7, after she told her dad she wasn't feeling well. He found her hanged later that day. She was "a lovely girl who would never want to cause offense to anyone," he tells the Telegraph. (More suicide stories.)