Eight year-old commits suicide after bullying in school
A mother of an eight year-old who committed suicide in January has blamed his death on bullying in school.
Gabriel Taye, 8, took his own life two days after being allegedly kicked and struck by his classmates at his public school in Cincinnati, Ohio, United States, according to the surveillance footage obtained by attorneys.
According to a report obtained by The Cincinnati Enquirer, homicide detective Eric Karaguleff described the scene from the video as several students attacking Taye and leaving him unconscious in one of the restrooms at Carson Elementary School on January 24.
CRIMINAL ASSAULT
“For many minutes, many students step over, point, mock, nudge, kick,” said Karaguleff in the email. “I witnessed behavior that in my belief is bullying and could even rise to the level of criminal assault.”
On January 26, two days after the altercation, Taye hung himself with a necktie from his bunk bed.
On the day of the assault, his mother Cornelia Reynolds had no idea of what really happened to her son.
After being found on the floor by the assistant principal then the school nurse, the third-grader’s mother was contacted and she was informed that she son had fainted.
She picked him up and after vomiting twice at home, she took him to Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center. Doctors diagnosed his pain as a stomach virus.
LOCKED HIMSELF
The following day the child returned to school and when he returned home he locked himself in his room. That evening, this mother found him hung from the bed.
According to the report, the video shows a child assaulting one child when Taye enters the lavatory, that’s when he tries to shake hands with the “primary agitator,” he grabs him and throws him violently against the wall.
The boy is then unconscious for seven and a half minutes.
“If the school had told her what had happened to him in the bathroom, that he was unconscious for such a long period of time, she would have taken to the hospital immediately, reported that to the medical professionals, and she would have called the police,” said the mother’s attorney Jennifer Branch.
“That’s why this is so frustrating for her, not knowing what really happened in that school.”