Indirect suicide

is the act of setting out on an obviously fatal course without directly committing the act upon oneself. Indirect suicide is differentiated from legally defined suicide by the fact that the actor does not pull the figurative (or literal) trigger. Examples of indirect suicide include a soldier enlisting in the army with the express intention and expectation of being killed in combat, or someone could be provoking an armed officer into using lethal force against them. The latter generally called "suicide by cop". In some instances the subject commits a capital crime in hope of being sentenced to death.[citation needed]

Evidence exists for numerous examples of suicide by capital crime in colonial Australia. Convicts seeking to escape their brutal treatment would murder another individual. This was necessary due to a religious taboo against direct suicide. A person committing suicide was believed to be destined for hell, whereas a person committing murder could absolve their sins before execution. In its most extreme form, groups of prisoners on the extremely brutal penal colony of Norfolk Island would form suicide lotteries. Prisoners would draw straws with one prisoner murdering another. The remaining participants would witness the crime, and would be sent away to Sydney as capital trials could not be held on Norfolk Island, thus earning a break from the Island. There is uncertainty as to the extent of suicide lotteries. While surviving contemporary accounts claim that the practice was common, such claims are probably exaggerated.[135]

Animal attacks

Some people have chosen to indirectly commit suicide by being attacked by predatory animals such as sharks and crocodiles, and in some cases the person has been eaten alive; for example, in 2011 in eastern South Africa a depressed man (who wanted to be attacked by a crocodile) jumped into a river and was consumed by a crocodile.[136] Similarly, in 2002 a depressed woman killed herself by jumping into a crocodile pond at the Samutprakarn Crocodile Farm and Zoo in Thailand.[137] In 2014 a second woman killed herself by jumping into the same crocodile pond in Thailand.[138] Both women were eaten alive.