Damn. Tragic story out of South Texas, where an Asian American teen committed suicide last week after facing years of bullying: Family: Bullying by 'wolf pack' led to Texas teen's suicide.16-year-old Teddy Molina, who was part Korean and part Hispanic, took his life with a hunting rifle after enduring years of threats, harassment and racial slurs from a group of students at Flour Bluff High School in Corpus Christi.
The group apparently called themselves the "Wolf Pack." Yeah, that doesn't make them sound like a bunch of teenage assholes:
The trouble for Molina, who was part Korean and part Hispanic, began at Flour Bluff Intermediate School in Corpus Christi, a port city of 300,000 along the Gulf of Mexico.Molina's parents say they made more than a dozen complaints to school officials about their son being bullied. That did little to help the situation. Some students were disciplined, but the harassment persisted. It eventually got so bad that Teddy left school last month.
The problems escalated in junior high school, when Molina joined the football team, where, his sister said, the players picked on him and the coaches allowed it. She said her brother told her that some of the bullies repeatedly said they were going to kill him and that she had helped come to his rescue when some teens cornered him at a taco stand and appeared ready to jump him.
“It got really worse this year, and that’s when my mom pulled him out of school” in March, she said, adding that Teddy had expressed a desire to commit suicide a few times over the bullying.
Last week, community members held a rally in Teddy Molina's memory, and used the opportunity to raise awareness around the issue of bullying. More here: Rally promotes anti-bullying, memory of Flour Bluff teenager.
UPDATE: Teddy Molina's family is filing a federal lawsuit against the school district: Molina Family Filing Lawsuit Against FBISD.