A 10-year-old boy in Indiana killed himself after a two-year bullying campaign which his parents claim his school failed to stop, despite contacting school officials 20 times in a year.
Sammy Teusch, aged 10, of Greenfield, Indiana, died by suicide on Sunday, May 5, according to an interview his parents, Sam and Nichole Teusch, gave to 13 News WTHR. They claim Sammy, one of four siblings, took his own life after enduring constant bullying which had become increasingly physical and which Greenfield Intermediate School had done little to address.
Sammy’s parents claimed in the interview that the bullying started two years ago at elementary school with verbal taunts and then progressed to physical assaults. His parents presented several pictures of bruising as evidence of the alleged assaults. “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… He was beat up on the school bus, and the kids broke his glasses and everything,” his father said, according to the New York Post.
Sam Teusch claims that he had been in contact with his son’s school 20 times in the last year regarding the ongoing abuse, but that nothing effective had been done. “I called the school, and I’m like, ‘What are you doing about this? It keeps getting worse, and worse, and worse.'” The superintendent, Dr. Harold Olin, claimed, “no bullying report was ever submitted,” when 13 News reached out to the school about the allegations, but the father maintains, “they knew this was going on.” (RELATED: Teachers Union: Trump Is To Blame For School Bullying)
The Teusch family is being strongly supported by their local community in their time of grief, according to an article by local publication The Daily Reporter. “The past two or three days we’ve probably had 1,000 people here and I probably knew 20 of them … There was a giant man that barely fit through that door who came in here and just had tears flowing down his face, and he gave me the biggest hug,” Sam Teusch told the paper.
Over 100 motorcycles showed up this morning to escort 10-year-old Sammy’s Teusch’s body to a Greenfield cemetery. Sammy killed himself last week after his family says he was relentlessly bullied. I’ll have this special tribute tonight. @WTHRcom pic.twitter.com/DZQwuBpXEj
— Chase Houle (@chase_houletv) May 15, 2024
Dozens of tributes have been left for Sammy at a tree in the family’s front yard, and hundreds attended the boy’s funeral at Brandywine Community Church in Greenfield, including the local Freedom Riders and Christian Motorcycle Club, who offered their support, according to a post by WTHR porter Chase Houle on Twitter.