Court: Parents of 8-year-old who died by suicide can sue educators

The parents CINCINNATI — of an 8-year-old student who died by suicide after being persistently bullied can move forward with a lawsuit against the Cincinnati school district that alleges wrongful death and other charges, a federal appeals panel ruled Tuesday.

The three-judge panel of the 6th U.S. Circuit Court Appeals said Gabriel Taye’s parents had established “reckless behavior” that prevents school officials from receiving governmental immunity for their handling of the case.

The lawsuit’s allegations also charge school officials with intentional and negligent infliction of emotional distress and failure to report child abuse. The lawsuit says Taye was bullied at his elementary school starting in first grade, with the bullying escalating in his thirdgrade year.

Other students punched and kicked him in assaults andonJan. 24, 2017, knocked him unconscious by throwing him against a bathroom wall, the parents say in the lawsuit.

He stayed home sick the next day, returned to school Jan. 26 andwas bullied again in the bathroomby students who took his water bottle and tried to flush it down the toilet, his parents say. He died by suicide that evening in his bedroom.

Taye’s parents, Cornelia Reynolds and Benyam Taye, say school officials either misrepresented bullying attacks on their son or failed to inform them.

“This is a preliminary decision based on plaintiffs’ side of the story and assuming that everything they say in their complaint is true,” the defendants’ attorney, Aaron

Herzig, said by email. “However, it does not reflect the facts as they have developed throughout this case.”

He declined to saywhether there would be further appeals of the ruling, which upheld a lower court.

The parents’ attorney, Jennifer Branch, was reviewing the ruling and didn’t immediately comment.