A 10-year-old Indiana boy's suicide, relatives say, resulted from relentless bullying at school ignored by teachers and administrators despite reports from family members. (Facebook/Nicole Hinkle Teusch)
Share
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
A 10-year-old Indiana boy took his own life after enduring relentless bullying at school, according to his family.
“I held him in my arms,” his dad, Sam Teusch, told WTHR. “I did the thing no father should ever have to do, and any time I close my eyes, it’s all I can see.”
Sammy Teusch, a fourth-grader at Greenfield Intermediate School, faced bullying until the night he died by suicide on May 5, as per his family’s account.
“They were making fun of him for his glasses in the beginning, then on to make fun of his teeth. It went on for a long time,” his dad recalled.
“I called the school, and I’m like, ‘What are you doing about this? It keeps getting worse, and worse, and worse,’ ” the dad said.
Family members estimated they had contacted the school 20 times about Sammy being bullied and ridiculted.
School District Says Bullying Never Reported
Despite the family’s complaints, the school district’s superintendent, Dr. Harold Olin, denied receiving any reports of bullying from the parents or the boy.
Sammy’s grandmother, Cynthia Teusch, criticized the district, saying, “That they can’t just say they have zero tolerance because that doesn’t mean there is zero tolerance about bullies, their zero tolerance means that they don’t have responsibility for it.”
“He was my little boy. He was my baby. He was the youngest one,” said the boy’s mom, Nichole, expressing her grief.
Read the full story at the New York Post.