What if in some of these overwhelmingly tragic cases, there is a factor in the family environment that has proved to be the trigger for a sucide attempt?

How does the story get picked up and reported on if there is a family wall of silence? What family would sue the school district then? Or stand up for gay rights?

also, I did “wait a day”. My commentary went up more than 24 hours after KSAX reported the toxicology results.

If the child was sexually abused, and the parents did not pursue it…?

SOMEONE is responsible here. Who can stand up for the child? Social Services? I would like to see their Departmental Responsibilities. I suspect that they are indeed responsible for pursuing the truth, should the parents or the School Board not choose to do so.

Also, does anyone else find it ironic that an Educator does not seek out the Truth, and relay the factual information, and that he does not reject mistruths?

Echo Post put up their article after this commentary was posted.

As for the facts… which ones have I gotten wrong? I’ll gladly correct any inaccuracies.

Thanks. They finally got something up… but what a self-serving piece. Amazing.

Perhaps if Tim took a day to wait until the paper went to press to see if they’d publish the story…

Perhaps if Tim’s article weren’t written in such an slanted way that anything now would be a wholesale re-write or take-down of the blog, it would be easier.

It’s just that it becomes very hard to be a critic when you get your facts wrong, and when the bias is so strong that correction has to be done with a deletion key.

Incidentally — if readers were to take Tim’s word for it, and were as active as I’d like to see more of us be — we’d call up the Echo and demand to know why, after all their comments, they hadn’t run the toxicology story. And we’d be told that, in fact, the story had run. Then we’d be asked where we got our bogus information. So, how about for the sake of the site’s reputation, Tim. Just a little moderation and patience now and again. Even for the nitwits out there.

Didaskalos…kindly point to where anyone here is calling any of what happened there a win. Another gay teen being bullied to death is not a win. That the nature of his death was being white washed by the local “newspaper” was an outrage, not a win. That there is now an official cause of death they can’t easily sweep under the rug isn’t a win, it’s more like a small shaft of light shining down on a lot of child abusing runts. It doesn’t make you feel good, it makes you feel sick to your stomach.

My thanks and sympathy to Lance’s grandparents and friends.

And thanks to BTB for calling out the people who should have supported and protected Lance, but who failed so miserably and whose first concern was to exculpate themselves and justify their mean-spirited, nasty little world.