Surveillance footage from a Cincinnati elementary school shows students beating up an unconscious 8-year-old who took his own life two days later, police say.
Carson Elementary School has declined to release the video that shows what took place Jan. 24 in one of its bathrooms, putting in dispute exactly what it contains, according to the Washington Post. The mother of 8-year-old Gabriel Taye only recently found out about the video, and she is now looking for some answers, the Post reports. Like, was there any connection between the bathroom incident and Gabriel’s suicide?
As the Post notes, a Cincinnati homicide detective has viewed the video and detailed that it shows a student in a red-and-gray coat punching another student in the stomach who was wearing glasses, sending the child to all fours on the ground. The boy then jumps in the face of another student in a “menacing manner,” the detective detailed in an email description of the video that was originally sent to the Cincinnati Inquirer, according to the report.
It was at that point that Gabriel—described as a dapper child who enjoyed wearing neckties to school—walks in and shakes hands with the boy in the red-and-gray coat. However, while shaking hands, the boy appears to drag Gabriel to the ground and to “celebrate and rejoice in his behavior” as Gabriel lay motionless on the ground.
Gabriel remained unconscious as students stepped over his body and pointed at, nudged and kicked him for about five minutes before an assistant principal entered the bathroom and found him.
Two days later, Gabriel was dead, having taken his own life. His mother found him in his bedroom, hanged by one of his neckties.
In the months following Gabriel’s suicide, his mother was unaware of the encounter in the school bathroom. School officials did not tell her that her son was attacked and rendered unconscious, simply telling her that the boy had fainted, family lawyer Jennifer L. Branch told the Post.
It was not until March that the video was brought to their knowledge. The family decided to release information about the video this week, hoping that others might be able to come forward with information about what happened. Branch said that a legal team is currently working to determine whether to file a lawsuit and who would be named as the defendant in such an event.
Then, on Thursday, Hamilton County Coroner Lakshmi Sammarco announced on a local radio station that her office would be reopening the investigation into the 8-year-old’s death.
The Cincinnati school district initially refused to release the video to the public or give any comment, but it is now saying that it plans to release the video within the coming days, blurring out the faces of the minors to protect their identities.
According to the Post, the school district also issued a statement saying that the description of the video given by the detective, lawyers and the Inquirer “mischaracterized” the video.
“While we are concerned about the length of time that Gabriel lay motionless and the lack of adult supervision at the scene when school administrators became aware of the situation, they immediately followed protocol by calling the school nurse to evaluate Gabriel,” the statement read.
District officials also say that a school nurse checked Gabriel’s vitals and found them normal. The nurse, it says, contacted Gabriel’s mother and asked her to pick him up to take him to the hospital. That is a claim the family has refuted.
“On the eve of Mother’s Day, it is unfortunate that CPS chose to blame Gabe’s mother for not taking him to the hospital after he was injured at school,” Branch said.
On the evening after the incident at school, after Gabriel’s mother was told that he “fainted,” he became nauseated and started vomiting, Branch said. His mother took him to the hospital, where she was told he had the stomach flu, she said. Gabriel stayed home from school the next day but went back on Jan. 26.
“He went to school and we have no idea what happened,” Branch said. That was the day he came home from school, went to his room and hanged himself.
“Though the connection between this incident at school and Gabriel’s suicide are not clear, the district shared this video with police investigators at the time of the incident,” the school district said in its statement. “Their investigation has concluded and no charges were filed.”
Detective Eric Karaguleff, who viewed the footage days after Gabriel’s death, sent an email to the school’s assistant principal, saying that he had seen “some concerning events in the video and I don’t even have a child at the school,” according to the report.
“I witnessed behavior that in my belief is bullying and could even rise to the level of criminal assault but due to the apparent age of the children involved my current opinion is it could be better dealt with appropriately at the school level,” he said in the email.
According to the Post, Gabriel’s mother, identified as Cornelia Reynolds, has declined to give interviews since the news of the video broke. But in the immediate aftermath of her son’s death, she spoke to local stations, saying that bullying may have had something to do with her son’s decision to kill himself.
The school system responded at that time by saying there had been no reports of bullying at the school between August and December 2016, the Post notes.
The Post reports that Reynolds told news station WLWT that her son spent quite a bit of time in the nurse’s office at school, and then there were other days when he just wanted to stay home. After his death, she saw those incidents as signs that he was being bullied.
“I guess he didn’t know how to tell me stuff was happening,” Reynolds said. “Him going to the nurse’s station or him not wanting to go to school, that was his way of trying to communicate with me. That was his way.
“He probably didn’t want to say, ‘Ma, somebody’s bullying or picking on me,’ you know?” the mother added. “He just didn’t know how to tell me.”
Family attorney Branch said that in light of what happened, parents at the school need to know about the incident and have earnest conversations about bullying in the school.
“For the parents at that school, they need to ask questions when things happen because they may not be getting the whole story from the school district,” Branch said. “Covering it up and pretending it’s not happening isn’t doing anyone any good.”
“How does an 8-year-old become so hopeless?” she added.
Read more at the Washington Post and the Cincinnati Enquirer.