News Beat
Streamer dies during live broadcast after twisted viewers paid to watch him down whisky and take drugs in sick challenge
POLICE are probing the death of a trash streamer who is believed to have killed himself live online in front of viewers.
Sergio Jimenez, 37, allegedly agreed to neck a bottle of whisky and snort six grams of cocaine in just three hours for a sick pay-per-view challenge.
The streamer was found dead by his younger brother at the home he shared with their mum in Vilanova i la Geltru near Barcelona.
He was found kneeling beside his bed in a chilling “prayer-like” pose as his webcam continued streaming to viewers.
As his family desperately tried to help him, voices could be heard coming from the computer.
Some of the followers said to have paid to watch him suffer were asking: “Are you sleeping off a hangover? Haven’t you finished off the whisky yet?”
Today cops confirmed they are investigating what could be Spain’s first death linked to an extreme online challenge.
They have not ruled out widening the probe to see whether anyone could be criminally responsible for possible “incitement to risky behaviour.”
Sergio’s devastated mum Teresa told Catalan daily El Periodico she had been warned months earlier that her son was spiralling online.
She said: “Jordi, my eldest son, who lives in the Pyrenees, warned us a couple of months ago Sergio was making these kinds of videos.”
She described the horrifying final moments before his death.
“I got up to go to the bathroom just before 2am and saw the door to his room was ajar.
“I asked him what he was doing but he didn’t answer. I tried to go in, but there were clothes or something on the bedroom floor and I couldn’t.
“I kept asking him from outside but he didn’t answer. I could see him kneeling on the bed, as if he were praying.”
Another son, Daniel, rushed to the room after Teresa raised the alarm and confirmed Sergio was already dead before calling 999.
He said: “There was an almost empty bottle of whisky, a couple of cans of energy drinks and a pile of cocaine on a red plate.
“My brother was kneeling on the floor, his head resting on the mattress.
“The computer was on and I could hear voices asking him if he was sleeping off his hangover.”
Teresa told police she had begged her son not to drink after spotting the whisky bottle hours earlier, warning him about the psychiatric medication he was taking.
But Sergio ignored her, insisting he would stop taking his tablets so he could drink instead.
Spanish media say Sergio was broadcasting to a private group, with viewers donating money and demanding increasingly extreme challenges in exchange for cash.
He was reportedly trying to emulate Simon Perez, a disgraced mortgage guru turned notorious so-called e-beggar who now lives off online donations for offbeat and often drug-fuelled stunts.
The pair had appeared together in several videos.
Reacting to the death, Perez said in his own YouTube video: “He’s passed away.
“I’ve been told he took six grams of cocaine in three hours. He took a two-gram line. That causes an overdose.”
He added: “It could have happened to me but it’s happened to Sergio.”
The case echoes the death of French influencer Raphael Graven, known online as Pormanove or JP, who died aged 46 in August after ten days of violence filmed and broadcast live.
Two fellow creators were later seen throwing water in his face in a desperate bid to revive him after he died in his sleep at a property near Nice.
French minister Clara Chappaz branded that case an “absolute horror”, triggering a judicial probe, although an autopsy later found his death was not caused by trauma.
A spokesman for the Mossos d’Esquadra said: “We can confirm we are investigating the death of a 37-year-old man found lifeless at a property in Villanova i Geltru in the province of Barcelona in the early hours of December 31.
“We are awaiting the full autopsy results and are looking into the context of this man’s death to determine whether a crime has occurred.”
