Where's the Roach?': Classmates of South Carolina Girl Who Hung Herself After Alleged Bullying Went Into ICU to Take Photos, Circulated Them on Social Media to Mock Her, Lawsuit Says
The parents of a 12-year-old Black girl who attempted suicide last year are suing her teachers and the school district in Greenville County, South
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The parents of a 12-year-old Black girl who attempted suicide last year are suing her teachers and the school district in Greenville County, South Carolina, for negligence in how they responded to alleged bullying and harassment of their daughter.
Ty Turner says she found her daughter Kelaia hanging from a belt in her bedroom on the evening of March 18, 2023. She told WYFF that her daughter was already cool to the touch and bleeding from her nose and that paramedics couldn’t find a pulse or heartbeat for a full eight minutes.
“She had fully committed to what it was that she was attempting to do,” said Turner.
Kelaia suffered severe brain damage and was in a coma for weeks, staying in the hospital for 101 days. Now 14, she is nonverbal and still has no control over her body, says Turner. She is dependent on a tracheostomy tube to breathe and a feeding tube and requires around-the-clock care from her parents and a part-time nurse.
According to the lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in South Carolina, Greenville Division, Kelaia Turner first experienced bullying at Dr. Phinnize J. Fisher Middle School in August 2021 and reported it to school officials.
In December 2021, fellow students called her “a man” and “a roach” in teacher Olivia Bennett’s class, the complaint says.
“Ms. Bennett was complicit in the bullying and said nothing to the other students to stop it. One student asked, ‘Where’s the roach?’ and Ms. Bennett pointed to [Kelaia].”
Ty Turner emailed Bennett and the principal to complain, noting in her email that “children had committed suicide from this type of behavior in the past.” The next day, the principal acknowledged her complaint and said they were “working tirelessly to repair whatever is damaged.”
Both parents then met with the teacher to address the incident and discussed the need for the student leading the bullying to be separated from their daughter. On Jan. 26, 2022, that student confronted and “cussed out” Kelaia for telling her parents about the bullying incident but was not disciplined, the lawsuit alleges.
The bullying continued throughout 2022, “with no actions taken by the Defendants,” according to the complaint, which details other incidents and reports to school officials by the girl’s mother, including a fight between her daughter and another student in March 2022, after which Kelaia was suspended and “the student who caused the fight was not.”
On May 23, 2022, one of Kelaia’s classmates played a song and video on YouTube called “The Black People Song.” Defendant John Teer, a teacher, “allowed the song to be played without any comment on its offensiveness, nor any reprimand to or discussion with the student who played it,” the complaint says.
After her mother emailed Principal Smith and Metris Cain, another teacher, to complain about the video, Cain allegedly replied the following day that faculty “had been speaking with other students and that the investigation would be continued the next day. She concluded by stating, ‘Just wanted you to know that we are not taking this concern lightly.’”
In October 2022, Turner informed the school that another student “had been pushing [Kelaia] several times over the past month.” The lawsuit says the offending student was not punished and that the only reaction by the faculty was to tell the girl to inform them if it happened again.
The bullying continued, the complaint says, including an incident when Kelaia’s clothes “had water poured on them and were then thrown into the trash.”
Students made more disparaging comments about the girl’s appearance in the ensuing months, says Ty Turner, including that she looked “like a man.”
She was also called “Trans,” “Mustache Face,” “Nappyhead” and “Ugmo” in the presence of teachers and school staff members “with no repercussion,” despite the school’s “zero tolerance to bullying,” according to a Facebook post by Turner in October.
