School accused of hiding bathroom assault before 8-year-old’s suicide

The mother of Gabriel Taye, 8, who committed suicide, has accused the boy's elementary school of hiding the fact that he was bullied and assaulted.

The attorney for the mother of the 8-year-old boy who committed suicide in Ohio has accused the elementary school, where the boy attended, of hiding the truth of an assault from his mother.

Attorney Jennifer Branch, who is representing Gabriel Taye’s mother, told Fox 19 News, that reports of surveillance footage being investigated showing the 8-year-old boy being kicked and hit repeatedly in a bathroom and being knocked unconscious directly contradicts what Gabriel’s mother was told.

“Mom is called, and she’s told that he fainted,” Branch said.

But in the surveillance footage, according to a police report by Detective Eric Karaguleff, Gabriel was hit and kicked for five minutes while he was unconscious in a bathroom at Carson Elementary School before the school’s assistant principal, Jeff McKenzie, rushed in.

Gabriel’s mother took him to the doctor for what she thought was the stomach flu when he complained of stomach pain. She never knew that he was being bullied.

“Maybe this had been going on for years, and she had no idea, so she couldn’t help him,” Branch said. “She couldn’t protect him, and now she wants to know what was really going on.”

Cincinnati Public Schools released a statement on Thursday confirming that Gabriel had been found “motionless” but said that the events of the video had been “mischaracterized.”

“The article suggests that other students were beating Gabriel during this incident, a description that video evidence does not support. The article also portrays other students in the video as ‘aggressors.’ Video evidence does not support this characterization,” school officials said.

Cincinnati News, FOX19-WXIX TV

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