KATY, TX — Kevin Reese Jr., a 10-year-old fifth grader at Robinson Elementary School, got off the bus for the last time on Jan. 21 with his big sister. His mom was out of town, and his stepfather was on his way home from work.
Kevin went into his room, tossing his books and backpack onto his bed. Several minutes later, Kevin’s mother, Crystal Smith received a phone call from her daughter that struck her at her core.
Her daughter, in a panic, was screaming into the phone that Kevin, her smiling little boy who loved art and painting, had hanged himself, Smith told Houston ABC affiliate news station KTRK.
In a moment that will stick with her the rest of her life, Smith told her daughter to stay on the line, to cut her brother down and then call 911. She did as she was told, but it was too late for the little boy who’d endured a constant barrage of bullying at his elementary school of a period of months.
Kevin is among a disturbingly long list of children who have chosen suicide to escape relentless bullying. For the past two years, a Patch national reporting project — inspired in particular by children like Kevin who felt so hopeless that they chose to take their own lives — has brought awareness to the terrible toll bullying takes on America’s youth.
One in three students is bullied in some form by their peers, according to No Bully, the largest anti-bullying advocacy group in the country. No Bully calls that an epidemic.
“When one in three kids is involved in a bullying situation on a daily basis, you know that’s epidemic proportion,” Erik Stangvik, No Bully’s vice president for development and strategy, told Patch earlier this year. “If this was something brought to the CDC and one in three people were getting some kind of disease, that would be an epidemic. We see this as such, so we’re constantly speaking to how we can eradicate this.”
‘I Just Want To Find An Answer’
By Jan. 21, Kevin decided he had enough.
“Everything was not real. I was in a place where I just couldn’t move,” Smith told KTRK.
Kevin was a seemingly happy boy, and a typical fifth grader, but inside, he was sad and tormented.
He struggled each day as he dealt with kids at his school who scrawled hateful messages on his tablet and told him he didn’t belong and he should “kill himself.”
One day in November, the bullying turned physical, and Kevin came home in tears. One of the boys punched him on the way in from recess and he just wouldn’t fight back, his mother said.
Kevin reported the bullying to the school, but the other boy denied a fight had taken place, KTRK reported. Nothing else was done, and just a few weeks later Kevin was dead.
It’s been just over two months since Kevin took his own life. His backpack and books, with his student ID badge attached, are where he left them on the day he died.
Smith can’t bear the thought of moving those things, and she desperately wishes her boy was still with her.
“I just want to find the answer, what happened that day, what was going through his mind,” she said.
Smith told KTRK that she hopes sharing Kevin’s story will spur other families to sit down and talk about bullying and suicide prevention.
If you or a loved one are thinking about suicide, or would like emotional support, call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at (800) 273-8255.
(Patch graphic/Kristin Borden)The Bully Menace: A Patch Series
As part of a national reporting project, Patch has been looking at society’s roles and responsibilities in bullying and a child’s unthinkable decision to end their own life in hopes we might offer solutions that save lives.
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