For many people, high school is neither easy nor pleasurable. In some cases, the situation can get so bad it ends in tragedy. Seventeen-year-old Kenneth Suttner was so severely bullied both in school and at work that he took his own life on December 21. But in an unusual development, his former boss at Dairy Queen where he worked after school has now been charged with involuntary manslaughter for his death.

Friends and family members testified in court that Suttner had fought all his life to shield himself from verbal and physical bullying. He went to Glasgow High School in Missouri where he was a frequent target of bullying for his weight and speech impediment. Other parents said that the school consistently failed to deal with the problem of bullying. One of them, Barbara Smith, said she had to move her son to another school district because the situation was so bad.

In Kenneth Suttner’s case, it didn’t even end when he went home from school. At his after-school job, his 21-year-old female manager Harley Branham kept the harassment going, according to testimony from Sutter’s former coworkers. Dairy Queen employees said Branham regularly harassed Suttner, she would make Suttner lie on his stomach to clean the floor by hand and once threw a cheeseburger at him for not doing a good job. After years of bullying in school and three months of working at the Dairy Queen, Suttner wrote suicide notes to his family and shot himself in the head.

Horribly bullied teen committed suicide; Dairy Queen manager charged https://t.co/XfnaP8nFV9 pic.twitter.com/BjPdM9g3Kf

— Canoe (@Canoe) February 2, 2017

On Tuesday the county coroner, Frank Flaspohler, held an official inquest, which is a process that is similar to a grand jury investigation but open to the public. This can be sought if it is believed that an occurred death was caused by a safety or health hazard that could continue to harm people. After the six-person jury listened to six hours of testimony from almost 20 witnesses, they reached the conclusion that Branham was “was the principal in the cause of death,” that Dairy Queen had failed to properly train their employees about how to prevent bullying, and that the same went for the high school.

Branham was among the witnesses that testified and admitted she had called him names but didn’t understand how that could have caused his suicide. She claimed that everything had been in a joking manner. The special prosecutor in the case, April Wilson, said, “We wanted to be very cautious and responsible. Both sides of the issue are extremely important. A young man is dead. But we also want to acknowledge that it’s not easy being in public education.” On Wednesday, she filed a second-degree involuntary manslaughter charge against Branham.

Dairy Queen released a statement saying that it was gathering more information about the case and that the restaurant is run by an independently owned franchise. County coroner Flaspohler hopes his decision to hold the inquest will lead to some change in how schools deal with bullied children. “Hopefully this makes the school pay attention to what’s going on. And it’s not just in that school. We all need to wake up and say this exists and we need to take care of it,” he said. Kenneth Suttner’s family also hoped the school would take action, saying, “If this can help one child at least Kenneth’s death wasn’t in vain.”

Emma Von Zeipel

Emma Von Zeipel is a staff writer at Law Street Media. She is originally from one of the islands of Stockholm, Sweden. After working for Democratic Voice of Burma in Thailand, she ended up in New York City. She has a BA in journalism from Stockholm University and is passionate about human rights, good books, horses, and European chocolate. Contact Emma at EVonZeipel@LawStreetMedia.com.

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At a pool party in 2015, white police officer David Eric Casebolt slammed black teenager Dajerria Becton to the ground and pinned her down with his knee. Now she has sued him, as well as the city and police department, for the psychological damage the incident caused her, citing excessive force and seeking $5 million in damages. Becton was only 15 at the time and was an invited guest to the party, which took place in a predominantly white neighborhood in McKinney, Texas. Another black teenager, Tatiana Rhodes, and her mother were organizing a cookout at a community pool as an end of the school year get-together for classmates. They live in the area.

A cellphone video that went viral shows Becton starting to walk away from the situation after police officers show up, but Casebolt runs over to her and pins her to the ground with a knee in her back. He also pulls her hair and shoves her face down in the ground while she pleads to see her mother. When some boys come up and tell the officer to let her go, he draws his gun at the unarmed teenagers. Many who saw the video thought it was clear that Casebolt overreacted, and he resigned from his position within a few days.

Rhodes, the girl who organized the party, said that it all started when a couple of white women at the pool started aiming racial slurs at the teenagers, calling them names, and saying that they should go back to their Section 8 homes. One woman even reportedly slapped Rhodes in the face. In a Youtube video interview with Rhodes, her mother criticized the grown women for harassing children rather than talking to the parents. At some point during the party, someone called the police and claimed that a group of teenagers from out of town had showed up and started a fight. But the Rhodes family said that only classmates who were invited attended the party.

Becton’s lawyer Kim T. Cole said Thursday that the incident affected Becton psychologically and that she is struggling in school. She said, “I would hope that at a certain point she gets some counseling and kind of regains her life and confidence. Emotionally, she is a wreck.” Cole said that the physical injuries–abrasions, head and neck injuries—have healed, but that the emotional scars will remain. Becton has since received repeated threats, been the victim of cyberbullying, and become a target at her school. Cole also said that Becton is afraid to call the police if anything happens to her, as she doesn’t trust law enforcement officers now.

#Texan teenager unlawfully tackled by #police, sues the city for $5 million: https://t.co/QmlzwopSUB pic.twitter.com/7DrY2wI5cB

— The Voice Newspaper (@TheVoiceNews) January 5, 2017

The lawsuit cites excessive force, assault, and unlawful detention. But a spokeswoman from the city of McKinney denied all the allegations and wrote in a statement that the McKinney Police Department will defend itself vigorously. Casebolt’s lawyer, Jane Bishkin, said that he “let his emotions get the best of him.” He was allegedly stressed after responding to two suicide calls right before arriving at the pool party, one where a man had shot himself in front of his family and one where Casebolt managed to talk a teenage girl out of jumping from a roof. After resigning, he and his family received death threats and had to move to an undisclosed location.

Casebolt was also sued back in 2008 for allegedly abusing a black driver, Albert Earl Brown Jr., who claimed that the officer had yanked his pants down to his ankles during a roadside search. Brown said he was being racially profiled, and that Casebolt told a white woman who was in his car that she had made a mistake by hanging out with him. The case was dismissed as Brown had marijuana in his car and was jailed. But the fact that Casebolt has been at the center of two separate racial incidents has many believing this runs more deeply than misunderstandings or stress.

Emma Von Zeipel

Emma Von Zeipel is a staff writer at Law Street Media. She is originally from one of the islands of Stockholm, Sweden. After working for Democratic Voice of Burma in Thailand, she ended up in New York City. She has a BA in journalism from Stockholm University and is passionate about human rights, good books, horses, and European chocolate. Contact Emma at EVonZeipel@LawStreetMedia.com.

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College alone these days is very expensive. Now, add grad school on to that, and I don’t care what you are going to make in the profession in which you were just trained, you are going to be in a whole lot of debt when you get out of school. Then, you have to go through the whole resume, interview process. And let’s face it, that is no fun. Which is why I think the teenager in the following story has the right idea: just skip the schooling portion of job placement. And while you are at it, just skip through the whole application process too. How do you do that? Just show up to the place you want to work, and blend in. Probably no one will ask you if you are supposed to be there.

Courtesy of Giphy.

To learn more, let’s examine St. Mary’s Medical Center in, of course, Florida–because that is where all these stories happen. A young doctor was recently escorted out of the building by security because, well he wasn’t actually a doctor so much as a teenage boy wearing a doctor’s coat.

Ok. Well, he tried and didn’t succeed. The way security is these days and the importance of safe hospitals means you couldn’t get away with such a scam for very long.  I mean, like in this story, the kid only got away with posing as a doctor for about 20 or 30…days. That is right. A month.

To be fair to the hospital, he didn’t actually work with patients in his month on staff. In fact, it was when he stepped up his game and actually went into an exam room, with a stethoscope around his neck and a mask on his face, and introduced himself as Doctor Robinson (and didn’t follow it with “I’m not a doctor, I only play one on TV”), that he got caught.

One of the real doctors noticed him and thought something wasn’t right. So he called security, who was surprised that the kid was faking it–as they had seen him around the last few weeks and thought he belonged there.

Here is the thing about this story that makes me feel a little bad about making fun of it: the kid, according to his mother, had an illness for which he had stopped taking medication. And I cannot joke about that. However, here is the part that make me feel perfectly fine joking about it: we know the kid’s excuse for doing this. What was the hospital’s excuse for not catching this kid faster? That I can make fun of.  And that is probably a big part of why the center will not be pressing charges.

This story has been told far and wide, and there is a good chance you have already heard about it. So you might be asking yourself just why I didn’t make that one obvious connection that everyone is making. And I will tell you why. Because everyone is making it, and I want to be a little more unique than that. So I will not say a word. I’ll just leave you with this picture, which will say a thousand words for me:

Courtesy of FanPop.

Ashley Shaw

Ashley Shaw is an Alabama native and current New Jersey resident. A graduate of both Kennesaw State University and Thomas Goode Jones School of Law, she spends her free time reading, writing, boxing, horseback riding, playing trivia, flying helicopters, playing sports, and a whole lot else. So maybe she has too much spare time. Contact Ashley at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

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In a small outer suburb of Boston, MA, a town named Danvers is reeling after the discovery of a young math teacher’s murder by one of her students, a fourteen-year-old named Philip Chism.

Twenty-four year old Colleen Ritzer taught math at Danvers High School, about 20 miles north of Boston. She was beloved by her students. In an interview with CBS News, one of her freshmen students Riley Doyle described Ritzer as “always really upbeat and positive and excited about math. She made every lesson like you wanted to learn it. For the first time, math became one of my favorite classes.” Ritzer was originally from Massachusetts, she had attended Andover High School and Assumption College. She was also well known at Danvers High School for being accessible to her students and a pioneer in using technology to connect with her students—for example, she updated her Twitter with their homework each evening.

The mystery began on Tuesday night, when Ritzer did not return home from work. A search for her yielded blood in the 2^nd floor bathroom of Danvers High School, and officials eventually discovered her body in the woods behind the school.  According to police, she was stabbed by a box cutter and may have been beaten.

A student from Danvers High School named Philip Chism was arrested on Wednesday and during an arraignment on Wednesday afternoon, charged with first degree murder and is being held without bail. He is being charged as an adult, pending a mental health evaluation. Philip Chism is 14 years old and originally from Tennessee. Chism was also reported missing the same night as Ritzer, but was later found walking along the side of the road.

Surveillance cameras at the high school show that Chism assaulted Ritzer, and then put her in a recycling bin that he dragged out into the woods and dispersed of the body. Before being found by the police, he was last seen running away from the soccer field and telling classmates that he needed to go take care of something. According to the police, after disposing of the body, he went to the movies and saw Blue Jasmine.

Chism has been described by classmates as nice, but quiet and reserved. He was a talented soccer player—the 6’2” freshman was a top scorer on the JV team. In an interview with Huffington Post, one of his teammates said about Chism, “he wasn’t violent at all. He was really the opposite of aggressive.”   When he was reported missing on Tuesday, his classmates actually spread messages through Twitter in an attempt to find him.

A probable cause hearing for Chism’s case has been set for November 22^nd. As of yet, police have not disclosed a motive. Ritzer is the second teacher to die a violent death at the hands of a student this week—Mike Landsberry, a math teacher at Sparks Middle School in Nevada was shot by a student earlier this week.

Teaching is a noble, tough, and thoroughly underappreciated profession. In the past few years, we’ve heard story after story about violent incidents occurring at schools of every grade level—from Newtown to Columbine to Virginia Tech. But what is almost most disturbing about Chism’s case is that it seems so normal and yet so abnormal at the same time. He was not a young man that came in with a weapon hoping to hurt a large number of people. His case is in many ways a straightforward murder. Often in mass murders that occur in schools, such as Adam Lanza in Newtown, the explanation deals with severe mental illness. But Chism might be different. He took pains to hide the body, and talked to classmates as he left. He, presumably, was wandering down the road to in an attempt to avoid the police. He seems in some ways more human than the school shooters to which we’ve become so utterly desensitized. His mental health will be determined in weeks to come, and hopefully Ritzer’s family will receive some answers and closure.

[Huffington Post]

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Featured image courty of [Joshua Mayer via Flickr]

Anneliese Mahoney

Anneliese Mahoney is Managing Editor at Law Street and a Connecticut transplant to Washington D.C. She has a Bachelor’s degree in International Affairs from the George Washington University, and a passion for law, politics, and social issues. Contact Anneliese at amahoney@LawStreetMedia.com.

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