More details from Billy Lucas’ last day

Timothy Kincaid

September 17th, 2010

More details have come out about the day that 14-year-old Billy Lucas took life. (WISHTV.com)

His mom last saw him around 8 p.m. that night as he put up the horses. In the police report she says he “was acting strange earlier and called 911…he told the dispatcher he was causing problems for his mom and people should come”. She told police she didn’t know why he called and told dispatchers there was no problem and not to come.

Billy had been suspended from school that day. Friends say he was fighting back with cuss words against the bullies. They say girls were harassing him in class when he stood up and let the words spew. He was suspended.

Jade Sansing met Billy as he was being harassed a year ago. She tells 24 Hour News 8 of his final days “everything seemed normal, but he did tell me some people were making fun of him and I told him I would help him and I did.” Help from Jade is now memories in the Facebook memorial page she created. She says, “I made a Billy Lucas memorial page so I could say my last goodbyes and everyone could know about the bullying.” She had to make her last goodbyes on the internet because there was no public funeral for Billy. Jade says the bullies would call Billy “gay and tell him to go kill himself.” Karen questions, “You actually heard people tell him go kill yourself?” She answers “yes”.

As for the school? They are denying everything.

The coroner and Greensburg school district say there is no evidence bullying led up to the suicide.

There is nothing about this story that doesn’t leave me furious and near tears.

johnathan

September 17th, 2010

Random question, and let me preface this by saying I am not a coroner…

How can a body demonstrate “evidence leading up to a suicide,” when in fact, a victim committed suicide? Isn’t such a statement coming from a CORONER a little political, or at least outside of the coroner’s official capacity?

Regan DuCasse

September 17th, 2010

I get furious and tearful when people are dismissive with the ‘children are so cruel’ line or ‘boys will be boys’, as if there is nothing that can be done. It’s something to be expected and ignored as ‘just a phase’.
This behavior prevails when good people do jack shit to teach their children some basic decency and manners.

Considering all the usual suspects talk about repressing homosexuality and how curable and so on, there is no wholesale interest in appealing to the better angels in children. There is no move to teach children self restraint and respect and empathy for another.
If you don’t continue to reinforce that in a child from the age of three on, then you’ve lost them by the 1st grade.

Being CIVILIZED is something that people need to teach their children, but there is always room to make gay people an exception to that.

If adults aren’t willing to listen to the thoughts and needs and feelings of gay people, then they reverse the necessary civil behavior in themselves.
I’ve been appalled and pissed at the bald faced way straight people argue with gay people over the issue of having a choice. Over who is more threatening to who and in what way.

I keep thinking to myself, how the hell can someone argue with another person’s experience? How is there an exception to that when it comes to a discussion on gay lives?
The children are listening, and it manifests in some of the most brutal and disgustingly enabled behavior I’ve ever seen.
Something that in no way adults would accept between each other. It’s not even LEGAL in the workplace, but there is no instruction to their children about this and it’s impact on their lives then and later.

I’m pissed off too here at the waste. I think you all can remember the case of a woman that pretended to be a teen boy online, engaging a 13 yr old girl she knew well, and then ordering THAT girl to kill herself after a cruel rejection.
That an adult felt compelled to do something like that to a vulnerable child, AND a child she knew well, was one of the worst things I’ve ever heard of.

“…Children can be so cruel…”
No shit, people. You taught them what they know.

Rob San Diego

September 17th, 2010

Didn’t ya’ll know that when you die we have a machine probe that hooks into the brain that gives a reading why we kill ourselves? I’m pretty sure that the electronic readout said ” I learned that Mom was making liver and Brussels sprouts and was going to force me to eat it.”

WHAT THE FRAK!

So then what is their expert ingenious opinion on why this child took his life? Oh wait I’m sorry, he lived in the midwest, so he must of been troubled about that Hitler Obama, and his socialist muslim hidden agenda.

Lucrece

September 17th, 2010

You know the worst part? Only the parents can sue, and most likely they won’t, given how sympathetic they’ve shown themselves to Billy’s death.

Nobody’s gonna pay here; they’re getting away with murder.

andrew

September 18th, 2010

Lucrece, where exactly are you getting that from? You don’t know these people, and the information offered here was, to put it mildly, scant and unconvincing. Please consider the temperance of your remarks and try not to be so ugly.

Folks, “gay” is just one of many tactics, and one of may so-called “motivations” for bullying. Bullies pick on *anything* that give them something to work with — differences in gender appearance, masculinity / feminitity, size, shape, color, surnames. They will try anything and everything until they find something that sticks. And yes “gay” is probably #1 on that list.

All of which is to say that yes, this is certainly of concern to the gay community. But it’s also much, much bigger than that — and we have an opportunity here to lead in the *larger* context of bullying.

For me, a small gay boy, to Lisa in 6th grade who grew to be 5’10” and grew size-C breasts well before her peers, and was tortured for it by both the girls and the boys, to Eric who was bullied — to death — in my middle school for being brown in a very white community… I remember.

Donny D.

September 18th, 2010

Being against “all bullying” is the kind of diluting widening of focus that the anti-gay movement is trying to use to defeat efforts to enact policies against anti-gay and anti-gender-presentation bullying.

Though I do think the bullying of girls who “develop” early and other sexual harassment of girls, so often by other straight girls, is related to what we suffer in that it is gender role-related, and I hope at some point pro-LGBT people could be part of a coalition against that too.

And perhaps part of a broader coalition against bullying of any students from traditionally abused groups (including non-white students and those who aren’t Christian, or who aren’t the “right” kind of Christian).

Leo

September 18th, 2010

I’m with Jonathan, I’m not in law enforcement either, but how would a coroner’s examination allow for such a determination?

customartist

September 19th, 2010

This isn’t about BEING gay, but about being PERCEIVED as gay. The mindset of the bullies, their resulting actions, AND the inactions and the denial by Principal Phil Chapple is the issue here.

The video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dp3qlx1D_bA&feature=player_embedded

It is as clear as a crystal ball that a community wide denial and cover up of a PERCEIVED gay 15 year old child being pushed to suicide by that very same community’s people is going on in full swing. You own this Greensburg! This mindset that it is Perfectly Okay to harass a child who is perceived as gay to the point of taking his own life, originates with, is perpetuated by, is endorsed by, and is denied by the Parents, and the Educational and Community Leaders of GREENSBURG, INDIANA, U.S.A.

If the School Board will not find a sufficient level of character within themselves to ACT on this, then let the chips fall where they may. Greensburg, IN will take on a new identity: “The United States Capitol City of Hate!!!”

The mother (condolences) even at THIS point cannot find it within herself to entertain the remote possibility that Billy might have been gay. Sadly part of the problem. The mother knew that he was harrassed. What did she do about it? Where is Social Services on this issue.

The Principal denies knowing of that which is common knowledge.

There has been ABSOLUTELY ZERO coverage in the Greensburg Daily Newspaper. Letters have been written to the editor. ‘non-coverage’

SO FOLKS…

*Let’s ask CNN to cover the horrible Child Death and Cover-Up of Billy Lucas*
http://www.cnn.com/feedback/tips/newstips.html

Jonathan

September 19th, 2010

I was bullied endlessly in school. It only ended when I left. I couldn’t stand it anymore. I took a GED and went into colleg at 17. It was much better than being kicked, punched and spit on by rednecks.

I feel sorry for this kid. But I sure know how he felt.

Jake

September 19th, 2010

Billy was gay. http://www.connexion.org/viewprofile.cfm?id=326321

And I’m sure it wasn’t that big of a secret. That explains the silence.

Priya Lynn

September 19th, 2010

Uh, no Jake, Billy was bisexual.

Timothy Kincaid

September 20th, 2010

Let’s say that if the Connexions account was real, Billy identified as bisexual.

Jessie

September 29th, 2010

Billy’s connexion page has been taken down because the link doesn’t work. Is there a way to verify when that registration to connexion was made? How can it be authenticated that it was not made by his bullies?

Terry

October 2nd, 2010

To: Rob San Diego

What exactly does Obama have to do with this, I ask you? We’re talking about a boy who was methodically tortured mentally and emotionally during school to the point he chose to take his life to end it all.

To: customartist

I agree with you. It’s hard to read about this story because I’ve been there. I was impressionable on my older sisters because I had no brothers to look up to. I was kind a courteous to women because I was raised that that is how a man acts toward women but, apparently, the kids I went to junior high and high school thought differently. I was called “fag”, “queer” and “punk” until college and my self-esteem was really broken. I knew I wasn’t gay but the more that kind of bullying is done to you, you start questioning whether or not it’s true. My only regret is but one thing which I did a few months ago: not telling my parents right away so that they could have taken care of it. A good and close friend of mine told me that I should NEVER let someone get to me like that, ever. I hate that Billy took his life and really wished there would have been a way to intervene and stop this. Him and all the other kids, known and unknown, that are getting tortured by these demons that have the audacity to call themselves human beings.

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