Posted on 04/11/2009 10:44:45 PM PDT by Chet 99
By O’Ryan Johnson | Friday, April 10, 2009 | http://www.bostonherald.com | Local Coverage
An 11-year-old Springfield boy, traumatized by school bullies, tied one end of an electrical cord to a support beam and cinched the other around his throat, hanging himself inside a stairwell of his family’s home, police and relatives said.
Carl Walker-Hoover left a note for his family in which he apologized, told his mother he loved her and left his video games to his brother, police said.
“It’s heart-wrenching,” Springfield police Sgt. John Delaney told the Herald. “It’s not uncommon for a police officer to find a person hanging, but to find an 11-year-old - it can jar even the most veteran officer. Most cops have kids.”
The boy’s aunt found him hanging about 8 p.m., Delaney said. Cops attempted to revive the boy, but he was pronounced dead at the scene.
Carl was a student at New Leadership Charter School, where bullies relentlessly targeted him, his mother told Springfield’s newspaper, The Republican. In an interview with the paper Wednesday, Sirdeaner Walker, 44, said she made repeated calls to the school in an attempt to end the torment, but was unsuccessful.
A conflict Monday with a girl there apparently proved the tipping point for her son, she told the paper.
Calls to the school yesterday after hours were not answered. A message left at the home of former political activist Henry Thomas, chairman of the school’s board of directors, was not returned. A relative of the boy who answered the phone at the family’s home declined to comment.
According to data the state released Wednesday, one person dies from suicide every day in Massachusetts. However, of the 124 children between the ages of 1 and 14 who died in 2007 - the most recent data available - suicide was not among the top 10 causes of death.
OMG.
What a horrible thing :-(
These schools are friggin' jokes. Same story... school is informed of the abuse and harassment, but the fat union thugs refuse to do anything.
Poor kid. I hate hearing stories like this.
Prayers for the child & his family.
Hope those bullies are happy now.
There is one category of people I hope fry in Hell: Bullies and their parents. (Two categories.)
Happy Easter!
Parents who have their children in government school can be almost certain they do not love their children. I do NOT mean they do not have affection for their children. By “love” I mean: Do you place your children’s eternal salvation above convenience, money, etc. Only a small minority of children who are abandoned to indoctrination and abuse by the government for twelve years ever become serious Christians.
Parents who have their children in private school should seriously question whether they love their children. Same reasons.
trust me the bully doesn’t care. I know from experience when I was in grade school a similar event took place.
You’re right, they probably just laughed about it...people are the worst.
Oh for God’s sake. Being teased or bullied in school in nothing new. The problem is, it seems to me, that kids are NOT left to resolve there own conflicts.
When I was bullied in school, a bloody nose was the order of the day for the bully. Today kids are coddled to the point that there are no winers and losers, and God forbid that you stick up for yourself.
What do you want to bet that this kid didn’t have a father figure in the home?
I think I can easily say that I was the most disliked person in my school. It was awful going to school and I planned how to avoid certain situations. It did make me stronger but it almost killed me, just like it killed this young man.
I am in tears as I read this story. Oh, how I wish someone had intervened.
PARENTS: IF YOUR CHILD COMPLAINS ABOUT TEASING AND/OR WANTS TO CHANGE SCHOOLS BECAUSE OF IT, LISTEN TO YOUR CHILD. HOMESCHOOLING IS AN OPTION.
The end of my story is that I have survived, but not without scars. I graduated from high school in ‘72. When my family lived for a time back in that same town, I refused to even consider that public school system for my children. I will never attend a high school reunion and frankly don’t really care about seeing my classmates ever again. Yes, there are still scars.
It freaks me out that most people view bullying as a normal, necessary part of growing up.
I can’t imagine - only 11 years old!! (My twin daughters are 11.) Bullying at the schools that my kids go to is pretty minimal - and gets taken care of pretty quickly from what I have see. Publik Skools even!
My son last year (he was 12) was getting picked on a LOT by one kid at his Choice school. We talked about it, prayed about it, what to do, etc. He put up with it a little longer (just verbal abuse, perhaps a bit of in your face stuff). We talked to the teacher about it after a few weeks of our son trying to deal with it. (He didn’t want to “narc” on the kid).
The teacher gave the bully an ultimatum - it happens again and he is out of the choice school. The kid apologized to my son, and they have been best friends ever since! Weird. And the other kid is a decent kid, smart, etc. He just needed the law brought down on him (and the boundaries set).
The idea of an 11 year old knowing pain so deep he ends his life rather than face any more of it......my mind can’t wrap around this.
Prayers up for this family.
I hope she sues and cleans out the Springfield Public Schools teacher’s retirement fund.
New Leadership Charter School
http://spsnlcs.com/
180 Ashland Avenue
Springfield, MA 01119
Hope those bullies are happy now.
Bullying is truly awful.
As a thoroughly un-athletic kid I had my share but I didn’t care much, because I knew and accepted I wasn’t remotely athletic, but I knew others who were devastated by that “stigma”, often brought upon them by their own parents.
Which likely explains why to this day, decades later, I still utterly detest and despise the “jock” mentality and totally turn off when corporate trainers start invoking sports analogies and their “team work” BS.
When my now 22 yr old son was in grade school he had a bully after him. I called the school countless times & I made appointments to speak at the school with the bully’s parents but they never showed. My son was told not to hit back put to call for a teacher. I suppose he was in 4th or 5th grade. One day that bully shoved the desk hard enough into my son’s back that he really hurt him. I went to the school like a mad woman, showing the principal my son’s bruises. Again I was told her hands were tied. I told my son the next day when the bully started his crap to pick a chair up & smash it on the desk. He didn’t want to do it but he did & told the bully the next time the chair was coming down on his head. I never got a call from the school nor did the bully pick on him again..
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