Suicide finding for bullied boy, 8, being re-examined
The death was startling even to the coroner: a boy only 8 years old apparently killing himself in his Cincinnati bedroom.
Now Gabriel Taye’s January death is being re-examined, after it emerged that he was bullied and knocked unconscious at school two days before he died.
Hamilton County Coroner Lakshmi Sammarco’s office has ruled Gabriel’s death a suicide, but she said last week that she was reopening the investigation to reexamine the boy’s injuries and whether there were contributing factors to his death.
“It was very hard for me to believe that an 8-year-old would even know what it means to commit suicide,” Sammarco said.
Suicides are rare among children so young, but not unheard of. Statistics from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show an average of 14 suicides per year nationwide among children 10 or younger since 1999. That compares with more than 1,400 per year among 11- to 18-yearolds.
At 8, children generally are just coming to understand death, says Dr. Louis Kraus, chief of child psychiatry at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago. Conceiving of ending their own lives can be even more remote.
“It’s possible, but at this young age, it’s very uncommon,” Kraus said. Even if a child has an idea of suicide, “many kids this young really don’t conceptualize the permanency of what they’re doing and what could happen.”
Gabriel had no history of mental health issues, said Carla Leader, a lawyer for his mother, Cornelia Reynolds. People who knew him describe him as a happygo-lucky kid.
Gabriel was at school Jan. 24 when, as seen on a choppy surveillance video the Cincinnati Public Schools system released Friday, he apparently tried to shake hands with a boy who had hit another child. Attorneys for Gabriel’s mother said the boy pushed Gabriel into a wall, knocking him unconscious.
An assistant principal arrived about 4 ½ minutes later to look at him. The school system said that it is “concerned about the length of time that (the boy) lay motionless and the lack of adult supervision at the scene” but that administrators followed protocol by having the nurse evaluate him. School officials said the boy told staff he had fainted and never said he had been bullied or assaulted.
Two days later, Gabriel hanged himself in his bedroom with a necktie, authorities said.