After an 8-year-old boy took his own life, the incident warranted an investigation. The authorities felt there had to be more to it—an 8-year-old doesn’t commit suicide.
The school shared their security footage with law enforcement. After reviewing the footage, a detective reported to the school that he saw “bullying” behavior that could rise to the level of criminal assault.
Based on the video, the young boy went to the restroom where other boys confronted him in the doorway in camera view. He dropped to the floor, unconscious for approximately five minutes. The footage is grainy, and I only watched it once so it’s hard to state conclusively that the boys assaulted him, although my mother’s sense and school employee experience would say they did.
The video shows other students nudging and looking at the boy until adults arrive upon the scene. His mother said she received a call from the school advising to pick up her son and take him to the hospital because he had fainted.
The mother reported that boys had bullied her son before. Had she known the incident stemmed from bullying, she wouldn’t have sent him back to school a few days later. After he came home from school that day, he hung himself.
Be warned the video is upsetting. Restroom Incident
The County Coroner said,
“It was very hard for me to believe that an 8-year-old would even know what it means to commit suicide.”
Because of the additional information from the video, the coroner reopened the investigation into the contributing factors surrounding the boy's suicide.
Since the boy’s death, the city has given the street he lived on a secondary name, named after him.
This case has not concluded. The parents want to hold the school accountable for their lackadaisical approach to dealing with bullying. The school argues they should be immune from liability. A federal judge ruled a jury should decide the outcome of the civil suit against the school district. The school district has appealed the judge’s ruling. I’ll do an update after the case is settled. #bully #schoolbully
If you or anyone you know may be considering suicide, please call the US National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at (800) 273-TALK (8255).
Be sure to email me if you hear of a true-crime you think would be good in a book. I’ll research it, share it and possibly use it one of my novels.
Source: U.S. District Court Southern District of Ohio, Cincinnati.com The Enquirer, CNN, ABC News