Just six days after 14-year-old Lamar Hawkins III committed suicide in his middle school bathroom after being a constant victim of bullying, his 11-year-old best friend, Jordan Gonzalez wanted to follow suit.
According to the Sun Sentinel, Gonzalez placed a note underneath his bedroom door to his mom saying, “I am going to kill myself.” The boy’s letter reads. “No one understands me and I get abused. So what do I live for?”
Jordan’s mom, Melissa Gusaeff, was able to talk him down from the situation, reminding him that she needed him and couldn’t live without him.
“I just told him I love him and I need him. I told him, ‘If you leave mommy, I won’t be able to live without you,'” Gusaeff told the Sentinel.
Jordan and Lamar grew fond of each other at Greenwood Lakes Middle School after meeting at the lunch table. They were the only two New Yorkers who attended the school which is located in Orlando, Florida.
Lamar shot himself with his father’s gun after being bullied in school, tired of always having to fight. At one point, he stated that he just couldn’t take it anymore. Speaking to the Sentinel, Jordan recalls what pushed his best friend over the brink.
“There was this one time where the kid just slapped him in the face, and that’s how the first fight happened. And the last fight was when he kept on getting bullied by the same person’s friend and he just couldn’t take it anymore, so he killed himself.”
It did not take long for Jordan to feel the pain, isolation, and fatigue Lamar felt from being bullied.
Gusaeff said her son was a relentless target of bullies who would call her son a “snitch.” She claims Jordan was recently poked in the neck with a pencil on the school bus, and despite her visiting the school three times to address the abuse, problems continued.
Seminole County public schools also didn’t immediately respond to Gusaeff’s allegations, causing even more frustration for her. She decided to take her son’s suicide letter public, posting it on her Instagram account.
In her caption, she went on to explain why she decided to do so, saying, “This is the same letter the school took lightly. I’m posting this [because] I have had it with that school and the kids who are bullying him.”
Gusaeff vows to do her best to prevent bullying in light of Lamar’s death and the anguish it has caused her son.