Sammy Teusch, Greenfield, Indiana 10 year old boy kills self after ongoing bullying and harassment despite the boy’s parents claims they approached his school no less than 20 times to make it stop.
The parents of a 10 year old Indiana boy who killed himself blame his school for failing to stop ongoing harassment and bullying of their son, this despite repeated attempts to raise the alarm bell with school officials.
Sammy Teusch, a fourth-grader at Greenfield Intermediate School, was bullied right up until the night he died by suicide on May 5, according to his family.
‘I held him in my arms,’ the boy’s dad, Sam Teusch, told WTHR. ‘I did the thing no father should ever have to do, and any time I close my eyes, it’s all I can see.’
‘What are you doing about this?
Sammy’s parents, Sam and Nichole, said the school should have done more to protect their son. His abuse went beyond school and showed up on social media, where classmates posted threats against him, his father told WTHR-TV.
The messages were from students who wrote, ”I’m going to beat you up. I’m going to beat you up when you get to school,” Sam Teusch told the station. The posts often said ‘mean things about his (mother), which would really, really set him off,’ the father said.
The parents said they complained to the school roughly 20 times about the bullying that started last year when he was in elementary school.
‘They were making fun of him for his glasses in the beginning, then on to make fun of his teeth. It went on for a long time,’ the father said.
‘He was beat up on the school bus, and the kids broke his glasses and everything,’ the dad claimed.
‘I called the school, and I’m like, ‘What are you doing about this? It keeps getting worse, and worse, and worse,” the dad continued.
Zero tolerance?
The school district’s superintendent, Dr. Harold Olin, denied any bullying reports had ever been submitted by either the parents or the boy.
However, he acknowledged that the school’s administrators and counselor had regular conversations with the family throughout the year, without elaborating because of confidentiality rules.
The schoolboy’s family insisted their fears had been made clear.
‘They knew this was going on. They knew this was going on,’ the dad said.
Sammy’s grandmother, Cynthia Teusch, was furious at the district for claiming it has a zero-tolerance policy on bullying.
‘That they can’t just say they have zero tolerance because that doesn’t mean there is zero tolerance about bullies, their zero tolerance means that they don’t have responsibility for it,’ she told WPTA.
‘People trust their kids to the school, but now that trust is breaking down.’
Police investigate
Greenfield police issued a statement, saying Sammy’s death was under investigation.
‘Parents, now is the time to talk to your kids,’ police said. ‘There shouldn’t be anything in their lives you don’t know about. School, homework, sports, friends, every aspect of their lives. The more conversations you have about everyday life, the more comfortable they will be talking about the hard stuff.’
The boy’s mom, Nichole, believes her son took his life because the constant bullying — especially an unspecified incident in a bathroom last week — left him too afraid to go to school.
‘He was my little boy. He was my baby. He was the youngest one,’ she told WTHR.
Sammy was remembered as a boy who ‘knew no stranger, meant no harm to anyone, never sat still, had the biggest heart along with the best smile,’ according to his online obituary. Sammy ‘had big plans for the future.’
Not immediately clear is the manner in which the boy took his own life or whether the school or any students would be brought to account.
