Bullying really does have ramifications for kids who cannot or do not know how to handle it. Regardless of our sexual orientations, bullying instills a level of fear in a person that can distort their reality. Unfortunately the kid in this story was also drunk, his distorted reality manifested itself in his horrible resolution to end the bullying. Here is the story:
A boy of 15 lay down in front of a train to commit suicide after being teased at school about his sexuality, an inquest was told yesterday.
Moments before he died, Jonathan Reynolds sent harrowing text messages to his family telling that them they were not to blame for what was about to happen. A passer-by saw him holding the mobile as he lay down on the tracks in front of a train travelling at 85mph (136km/h) through Pencoed railway station near Bridgend, South Wales.
In his last text message sent to his father, Mark, and his 14-year-old sister, Samantha, the teenager wrote: “Tell everyone that this is for anybody who eva said anything bad about me, see I do have feelings too. Blame the people who were horrible and injust 2 me. This is because of them, I am human just like them.
“I hope they rot in hell 4 what they made me do. They know who they are.”
He added: “None of you blame urself mum, dad, Sam and the rest of my family. This is not because of you.”
A postmortem examination showed that Jonathan, who achieved a grade A in his GCSE Welsh oral exam on the day he died, had a blood-alcohol level three and a half times the legal limit for driving.
The inquest jury sitting at Merthyr Tydfil Magistrates’ Court was told that Jonathan, a pupil at Bryntirion Comprehensive School, had argued on the phone with two friends, Saphra Hayes and Nicola Kennett, on the evening he died.
Both girls told police that they ended their conversations with Jonathan on good terms. His mother, Caroline, told the inquest that she believed that the arguments had been a “catalyst” for his actions. She said: “He was, to all intents and purposes, in for the night, and then following a few angry phone calls he changed his mind and went out.”
South Wales Police investigated Jonathan’s death because of the nature of his final text message, but Detective Inspector Russell Warwick said: “There were no issues that constituted criminality.”
Although Jonathan had not complained of being bullied at school, Detective Chief Inspector Sandra England, of the British Transport Police, said that weeks earlier he had confided to a friend that he was gay.
The friend, Aimee Murray, told Ms England that Jonathan had been teased about his sexuality by a number of boys at school. She also said that he had been using concealer on his face because of acne.
Thomas Coleman, from Pencoed, was walking his two dogs with his wife near the railway station at 8.25pm when he saw Jonathan on the line.
Mr Coleman said: “He had a mobile in his hand. I called out and said, ‘Get off the track’. He looked at me and just put his head back down and I saw him walking across the track. I was walking across the bridge and he was walking across the track and he seemed to lie down and the train came.”
William Roberts, the driver of the train from Cardiff to Carmarthen, saw Jonathan jump down from the station platform on to the track. There was no possibility of avoiding him as the train’s stopping distance at 85mph was nearly three quarters of a mile. Mr Roberts said: “I started to blow the horn. He was walking across the line right across the track and just lay down on the line.”
Dr Alan Rees, a pathologist, concluded that Jonathan died of multiple injuries. The jury returned an open verdict.
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