Family sues school district, staff over student’s suicide
On the morning that 16-year-old Logan LeBlanc was buried — having taken his own life after what a lawsuit alleges was repeated bullying — a classmate came to his graveside.
“My friendship with Logan was one of the best high school friendships I’ve had so far,” the student, a 16-year-old sophomore at Liberty North High School in Missouri, told The Kansas City Star last week. “Logan would do anything for me, and I would do anything for him as well.”
Except according to claims filed in a wrongful death suit against the Liberty school district and seven faculty and staff at Liberty North, it is the “Mercenaries” — a group that the student founded — who played a significant role in LeBlanc’s agony.
It’s an allegation, however, that the student denies, insisting that while the name may sound ominous, the Mercenaries were little more than a short-lived online chat group that took its name from the video game Grand Theft Auto.
“Yes, I was the organizer of this group,” said the student. “However, this group wasn’t maliciously bullying Logan. As a matter of fact, I was actually close friends with Logan. … He was originally in the group for a week or so. … After Logan’s death, I made an email group chat and movement named #TeamLogan.”
The student is not named at the request of his mother, who feared backlash. The Star agreed, given that he’s a minor, he’s not charged with a crime and he’s not named in the lawsuit.
The suit, filed in Clay County Circuit Court in August on behalf of LeBlanc’s mother, Kristi Rice, has rattled students at Liberty North, a school of some 2,000. LeBlanc was in his sophomore year when on March 6, he attempted suicide in his grandfather’s basement. He died five days later, on March 11, at Children’s Mercy Hospital. He was buried on Saturday, March 16.
Thomas Rice, LeBlanc’s grandfather, told The Star he stands by his assertion that the Mercenaries were chief among his grandson’s tormentors.
“He talked about that group all the time,” Rice said. “He said they were bullying him. He didn’t like what they stood for. He didn’t like them. He just wanted them to leave him alone. It’s one of those groups that you were either with them or you wasn’t. He was against them.”
The 21-page complaint is not suing the Mercenaries, or holding them liable for LeBlanc’s death. It instead blames the Liberty district and some administrators, counselors and teachers, alleging that they acted “negligently and carelessly” in failing to follow written board policies once staff was made aware that LeBlanc may have been the victim of bullying and was contemplating suicide.
LeBlanc reportedly wrote a note to his math teacher saying, “there are times that suicide has come across my mind. I’m in a terrible spot mentally.”
The board’s policy on bullying states that the school’s principal “or other designee” must start an investigation within two days of receiving a complaint of bullying. Its policy on suicide awareness and prevention includes the establishment of a crisis response team or CRT.
The suit claims that, to the family’s knowledge, neither was done.
Although the Mercenaries are not being sued, the group is mentioned a dozen times in the suit as playing not the only role, but a central role, in bullying and harassing LeBlanc and, on multiple occasions, beating him up in a high school bathroom. The suit claims he was bullied by others as well.
Two of LeBlanc’s friends, contacted through the attorney who filed the lawsuit, agreed to speak to The Star, but also on condition of anonymity out of concern for retribution from students among the Mercenaries.
The first friend, 16, a junior at Liberty North, said she did not know whether LeBlanc was being harassed or bullied by the Mercenaries. “He never really told me about it,” she said. But she said she could speak to claims of friendship.
“I knew him since 6th grade,” she told The Star in a text. “He was one of my close friends and he was not friends with the Mercenaries or anyone [who is] a part of that group.”
The second friend, also a junior and 16, said he’d known LeBlanc since seventh grade. “I was really good friends with Logan,” he said. The student said he and LeBlanc often played cards at school together and went to the same summer pool.
“Logan wasn’t friends with the Mercenaries,” he said, “he just knew them.”
But he also said he could not attest to whether the Mercenaries were bullying him.
“I didn’t know anything about bullying,” he said. “He seemed in high spirits even a week before he tried to commit suicide.”
In a written statement, Liberty spokesman Dallas Ackerman on Wednesday said the school district has no comment because of pending litigation. Nor could they discuss any disciplinary actions in the wake of allegations because “student records are closed records by state statute, and private/confidential by federal law.”
In a statement, the district said it “will let the legal process take place.”
“Liberty Public Schools take the health, safety and welfare of all our students seriously,” the district stated, “and we have Board policies in place that address this. Our school teams work tirelessly to ensure our students have resources readily available if in need of extra support.”
LeBlanc’s mother previously described her 6-foot-3, 245-pound son as a “gentle giant” who, the lawsuit states, was “frequently picked on because of his weight.”
“Kids joked about his weight constantly,” Daniel Zmijewski, the family’s attorney, said in the suit. “They also ridiculed him for other things like his haircut.”
The leader of the Mercenaries, however, told The Star in a series of texts that if LeBlanc was being bullied, it was not by him or, to his knowledge, others in the group.
“The people in the group chat were also friends with Logan,” the student said.
“People have been accusing us of bullying Logan,” he said. “And, to this day, they still are. Logan was never beat up in the restroom [by us]. I was around Logan for 60% of the time last year, such as walking to classes and eating lunch with him.”
The Mercenaries, he said, began as a group chat, with about seven people, when he was in eighth grade and LeBlanc was a freshman. According to the lawsuit, LeBlanc’s problems with bullying began that year when he was on the high school football team. The Mercenaries organizer noted that neither he nor other people in the group chat were in high school when LeBlanc’s problems with bullying purportedly began.
“I started the group chat as a basic, conversation group,” the student said, “then changed the name to the mercenaries. However, at the time I changed it, I never fully knew the definition of the word ‘mercenaries.’
“The things that were said in the group chat were about school work, friendships and things going on at Liberty North High School.”
He said the group chat lasted about two weeks, and LeBlanc left the group after about a week. He said that when he entered Liberty North as a freshman, LeBlanc not only was a friend, but also his protector.
“I was attacked last year and Logan helped me through it, since it was difficult for me,” he said.
“As far as I know, when I came as a freshman, I never saw Logan getting bullied. … As far as I know, he was never picked on when I was a freshman. He never mentioned to anyone, or talked to me, about being bullied.”
The lawsuit makes the point that “some of the Mercenaries had the audacity to go to Logan’s funeral.”
The student said he went, driven by this mother, because he considered LeBlanc a friend.
“I went to the wake, mass and funeral,” he said. “I also went to the graveyard to witness the burial.”
Now some among the Mercenaries are receiving backlash, he said.
“Things at school were tough when the [news] was released to the public,” he said. “I wasn’t primarily blamed for it, however, one of my friends was threatened so much that the school had to make sure armed security walked him around to prevent a possible fight.
“When I saw the article come out, I immediately emailed the principal of Liberty North explaining how my safety was somewhat compromised because I was the leader of the group chat, and they already knew I was a close friend with Logan.”
The Star attempted to contact other members of the Mercenaries group, but received no responses.
Zmijewski, the family’s attorney, responded, “I absolutely stand by everything in the complaint.” He maintains that the school failed to respond to the grandfather’s complaints about the Mercenaries, and that that was simply part of a larger wrong.
“Logan is not here to speak for himself anymore,” Zmijewski said. “But it was one of the elements, in addition to other elements, where he was being beaten up by other kids. He was giving signs and writing statements to staff.
“None of that was properly handled.”
Besides the Liberty school district, others named in the suit are then-Liberty North principal Precious Kurth, now an assistant superintendent for Kansas City Public Schools, assistant principals Lee Allen and Joshua Baldwin, counselors Jill Brock and Neil Corriston, Spanish teacher Susan Lynn and math teacher Matt Barnard.