Posted on 04/23/2009 9:38:13 PM PDT by Pinkbell
ATLANTA, Georgia (CNN) -- Eleven-year-old Jaheem Herrera woke up on April 16 acting strangely. He wasn't hungry and he didn't want to go to school.
Jaheem Herrera's mother thinks he hanged himself because he was perpetually bullied at school.
But the outgoing fifth grader packed his bag and went to school at Dunaire Elementary School in DeKalb County, Georgia.
He came home much happier than when he left in the morning, smiling as he handed his mother, Masika Bermudez, a glowing report card full of A's and B's. She gave him a high-five and he went upstairs to his room as she prepared dinner.
A little later, when his younger sister called him to come down to eat, Jaheem didn't answer.
So mother and daughter climbed the stairs to Jaheem's room and opened the door.
Jaheem was hanging by his belt in the closet.
"I always used to see these things on TV, dead people on the news," says Bermudez. "I saw somebody die and to see this dead person is your son, hanging there, a young boy. ... To hang yourself like that, you've got to really be tired of something."
Bermudez says bullies at school pushed Jaheem over the edge. He complained about being called gay, ugly and "the virgin" because he was from the Virgin Islands, she said.
"He used to say Mom they keep telling me this ... this gay word, this gay, gay, gay. I'm tired of hearing it, they're telling me the same thing over and over," she told CNN, as she wiped away tears from her face.
But while she says her son complained about the bullying, she had no idea how bad it had gotten.
(Excerpt) Read more at cnn.com ...
Ping
That is soooo sad.
It is sad and heartbreaking. I pray for his soul and I pray for peace in his family.
And I hope that those bullies are caught and face some sort of action.
:(
Why do kids call kids gay at 11 years old. Certainly the kid was not gay. He might have had feminine way about him but he was not gay. It is ridiculous for kids to do that. Sure if he was 16 and came out than fine, but 11 years old??? The kids who made fun of him should be ashamed of themselves.
No words worthy of such sadness. Poor kid. Can’t imagine the suffering his family is going through right now. Can, I suppose, but don’t want to.
so much for socialization in gobernment schools..
Parents, it’s past time to get your kids out of government schools.
“But while she says her son complained about the bullying, she had no idea how bad it had gotten.”
I am not blaming the mama, but it’s a lesson to us all, bullying is a terrible burden for a kid to bear.
Would we go to work where we are called “gay” and taunted as “the virgin” and insulted all the time? No, there are workplace rules against that. It isn’t tolerated for a day. Yet some expect that children should bear it for years.
Sad tragedy.
Horrific.
I know the feeling.
Horrific.
Each bully ought to have to go and sit with the corpse and stare at it for at least 15 minutes.
There isn’t a more vicious animal out there than one kid vs. another, especially at that age.
What a sad story. The young man was neither ugly nor gay yet some idiot kids couldn’t stop themselves from being idiots.
This isn’t a new development either, it was like this back when I was in elementary school going on 30 years ago.
It’s so sad to use a permanent solution to a temporary problem.
This should not be seen as a “gay” issue, no matter what language the bullies used. A bully, is a bully is a bully, and the language a bully uses is whatever the bully thinks will intimidate, or taunt, the victim.
Two things.
In my day, the worst bullies were removed to reform school and to the rest of the kids the remaining bullies were the most unpopular kids. I think if the first part is done more often, the second part will more often follow.
BTW, where's his dad?
I bet they will have a day to honor him and those same azzhats will do something incredibly mean to “honor” him. May they live with the tortured knowledge they themselves were the reason for an unnesesary end to a young boys life.
In the old days, if someone called you “gay”, you knocked their teeth out. In our new society, you go home and kill yourself.
1) Because Kids are cruel
2) Because Kids have the homo agenda in their faces from age 5 so they allknow exactly what gay is..
Lot's of kids commit suicide for variety of reasons. What makes this story so special that CNN has to publish it is... Drumroll please
"He used to say Mom they keep telling me this ... this gay word, this gay, gay, gay. I'm tired of hearing it, they're telling me the same thing over and over," she told CNN, as she wiped away tears from her face.
Oh... so it's the use of the word gay as a perjorative... Ban it... Make it illegal... Make it a hate crime...
I hate CNN with their constant liberal agendas driving news coverage.
What kind of worthless parents wouldn’t recognize their kid is depressed?
I don’t see any indication here that this was confirmed to be an intentional suicide. So many kids are playing this idiotic “choking game” these days, and a few have died doing it alone. If there was no suicide note, nobody reporting he told them he was planning to kill himself, and he’d come home from school happy about his report card that day, I don’t think this was intentional suicide. Maybe there’s more info that isn’t given here, but from what I see here, the mother is being quick to blame other people for her son’s “suicide”, without any substantial evidence to support the allegation.
It’s stories like this that make me glad that hubby and I make the financial sacrifices necessary to be able to homeschool. I can’t imagine my precious babies subjected to that kind of cruelty. Or worse yet, my precious babies learning to be that cruel from others.
My heart breaks for that precious little boy and his mother. And his sister.
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