Mother Of 9-Year-Old Black Girl Who Committed Suicide After Being Bullied Sues School
McKenzie Adams, a 9-year-old girl who had dreams of becoming a scientist, committed suicide at her grandmother’s home in Linden, Alabama in in December 2018. Now, her mother is suing her elementary school for failing to protect the young girl.
Jasmine Adams is reportedly suing US Jones Elementary School not only for allegedly failing to stop the bullying she received but for punishing her when she made repeated pleas for help.
A boy allegedly told McKenzie to kill herself, instructed her how to do it and said she’d be “better off dead” the day she took her life. The lawsuit also claims she endured racial and obscene slurs from the boy and wrote about the bullying by at least one other boy in her diary.
Filed on Thursday (January 16), the suit claims that Jasmine and McKenzie’s grandmother Janice Adams complained to the school about the bullying but officials failed to act.
Instead, administrators at the young girl’s school showed “deliberate and blatant indifference” to the bullying. Her teacher, Gloria Mims, allegedly told McKenzie to “tell it to the wall because I do not want to hear it.”
The family's attorney Diandra Debrosse Zimmerman, condemned the “morally appalling” behavior of the school.
“The ultimate consequence of this lack of interest and empathy was the tragic death of a 9-year-old,” she said in a statement, according to the Daily Mail.
Aside from Mims, Demopolis City Schools Superintendent Kyle Kallhoff, former US Jones Elementary School Principal Tori Infingerand and Assistant Principal Tracy Stewart have all been named in the suit.
The Adams family is seeking an unspecified amount for the alleged wrongdoing.
