7-year-old's suicide shocks Detroit community

• Share on Facebook
• Share on Twitter
• Share via Email
• Copy Link

  Link Copied

A boy’s 14-year-old sister had to look through the keyhole of a locked door to find her brother hanging from a bunk bed with a belt around his neck, according to a police report. The 7-year-old boy’s name is not being released. The girl alerted her mother and called 911. The mother and a neighbor forced their way into the room and took the boy down. The boy is reported to have been depressed from being bullied at school and in the neighborhood by other kids about his parents’ recent separation. The Detroit Free Press has the story:

Peering through the keyhole of a locked door in her family’s home near Detroit’s New Center, a 14-year-old girl saw the unthinkable: her 7-year-old brother hanging from a bunk bed with a belt around his neck, a police report says.

The girl alerted her mother and called 911. The mother and a neighbor forced their way into the room, took the boy down, and called 911, too.

The 7-year-old, whom the Free Press is not naming, had been depressed about being bullied by other kids at school and in his neighborhood, and about his parents’ recent separation, the boy’s mother told police, according to the report.

“It’s just a tragedy on so many levels,” Detroit Police Chief Ralph Godbee Jr. said Thursday, calling the situation “unfathomable.”

He said the department is investigating the child’s death, but as of Thursday afternoon, it appeared the situation is “exactly as presented” — a suicide.

Click here to read the full story.