Boy who killed himself didn’t say he was bullied

School surveillance video shows eight-year-old was knocked unconscious

An eight-year-old boy shown on surveillance video being knocked to the floor unconscious at school two days before he killed himself told staff he had fainted and never said he had been bullied or assaulted, a school spokeswoman said Friday.

Gabriel Taye’s mother didn’t learn of the bullying until her attorneys saw a copy of an email written by a Cincinnati police homicide detective in an investigative file that describes the scene outside a boys’ bathroom, her lawyers said. The attorneys have questioned why the mother was told he fainted on Jan. 24 when the video shows he had been injured by another boy at Carson Elementary School.

The school spokeswoman said administrators weren’t aware of the recording until days later when the detective investigating Gabriel’s suicide requested surveillance videos from security officials.

Meanwhile, the Hamilton County coroner said she is reopening the investigation into Gabriel’s suicide. He hanged himself with a necktie in the bedroom of his Cincinnati apartment on Jan. 26.

On Friday, a small group of demonstrators gathered on the sidewalk outside Carson Elementary, with some parents complaining about their children being bullied.

Carolyn Emery has two children at the school, including a daughter who was in first grade with Gabriel. She said he was a “very loving little boy who always had a smile on his face.”

Her nine-year-old daughter, Jericka, said she has been bullied as recently as this week, when another girl smacked her. She said she has seen a lot of bullying at the school and doesn’t think it will get any better.

“They won’t do anything about it,” Jericka Emery said.

The district released copies of a choppy 24minute-long video that shows one boy bullying other students and then, according to the mother’s attorneys, pushing Gabriel into a wall when he tried to shake the boy’s hand and knocking him unconscious. The spokeswoman said it’s unclear from the video what happened to Gabriel at that moment.

An assistant principal arrived about 4 1/2 minutes after Gabriel fell to the floor, followed by other school employees and the school nurse, who helped him to his feet. He was on the floor just over seven minutes.

Coroner Lakshmi Sammarco told Cincinnati radio station WLW on Thursday that she asked police for a full investigation to determine whether there were contributing factors to Gabriel’s suicide, WXIX-TV reported.

“It was very hard for me to believe that an eight-year-old would even know what it means to commit suicide,” Sammarco told WLW.