The grieving parents of a young boy who committed suicide after being bullied by his classmates for years can file a lawsuit against the Cincinnati school district.
A panel said the parents of Gabriel Taye had established ‘reckless behavior’ that prevents school officials from getting governmental immunity for the way they handled the incident.
According to the lawsuit, 8-year-old Taye was bullied at his school since first grade and the bullying escalated in his third grade.
The allegations of the lawsuit charge school officials with failure to report child abuse and intentional and negligent infliction of emotional distress.
A CCTV footage from January 24, 2017, shows Taye unconscious on the bathroom floor while other students aggressively kicked and punched him for five long minutes until school staff intervened.
Taye’s parents, Benyam Taye and Cornelia Reynolds, said the school officials didn’t even call 911 and only called his mother more than an hour later.
The lawsuit alleges that when they finally called Reynolds, the administrators lied about what had happened, saying that the boy only fainted.
When Reynold asked him what exactly happened, her son said he only remembered falling and hurting his stomach.
Taye vomited two times that night and he was rushed to a hospital where he was diagnosed with a gastrointestinal issue.
But when he returned to school on January 26, other students bullied him again in the bathroom.
He was found dead in his bedroom that evening.
Taye’s parents say they would not have sent their son back had they known about the bullying incidents.
According to the court ruling, the administrators at Carson Elementary School did not call 911 when the boy was unconscious, failed to discipline the bullies, withheld information, and did not supervise the bathroom despite repeated bullying.
Judge Bernice Bouie Donald said the school administrators “ultimately, prevented Taye´s parents from fully understanding Taye´s horrifying experience at Carson Elementary until it was too late.”
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Replaced!