Two days before 8-year-old Gabriel Taye ended his life, his classmates wandered around him as he lay motionless on a bathroom floor. They nudged and poked him, a school surveillance video shows, but no one helped until an assistant principal walked in several minutes later.
Gabriel’s parents allege that the Cincinnati school never told them what had happened, but instead said their son had fainted. Carson Elementary School officials argue that the third-grade student never mentioned being hurt by other children and had no visible injuries.
In a legal battle stemming from Gabriel’s suicide, school district administrators contended Wednesday that they are immune from liability because they have no responsibility to eliminate violence between students, Courthouse News Service reported. The comments came in a hearing before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit after the school appealed a lower court judge’s refusal to dismiss the parents’ wrongful-death lawsuit.