Boy was assaulted by classmate before killing himself

Associated Press

School officials never told the mother of an 8-year-old Ohio boy who killed himself that another student had thrown him against the wall two days earlier and knocked him unconscious in an attack recorded by a surveillance video, attorneys for the boy’s mother said Thursday.

The 8-year-old hanged himself with a necktie in the bedroom of his Cincinnati home on Jan. 26. School officials called the boy’s mother the day her son was bullied and said he had fainted, attorney Carla Leader told The Associated Press.

“They didn’t tell her the whole story,” Leader said. “The school also said his vitals were fine and he was alert.”

The mother learned of the bullying and the surveillance video after her attorneys obtained a Cincinnati police investigative file about her son’s death. The file included a copy of a Feb. 3 email from a homicide detective to an assistant principal at Carson Elementary School and other Cincinnati school officials describing what he saw on the video obtained from the school district’s security department.

Cincinnati Public Schools, in a statement issued Thursday, did not address the allegation that officials at the elementary school didn’t tell the boy’s mother what had happened. School district spokeswoman Janet Walsh said the detective “mischaracterized the events in the video,” the existence of which was first reported by the Cincinnati Enquirer.

Leader said she watched the surveillance video and that it shows another boy acting aggressively toward students. When the 8-year-old approached him and tried to shake his hand, the boy threw him against the wall, knocking him unconscious, Leader said.

Other students stepped over the boy while others poked him with their feet as he lay unconscious for 7 Ω minutes before an assistant principal and a school nurse came to his aid, Leader said. The mother came to get the 8-year-old after the school called her.

The detective told school officials that while he had concerns about the bullying, which could be considered a criminal assault, he added that the school would be better suited to handle the situation because of the children’s ages.