Huron Township, MI: Mourners remember taunted Huron Township teen who killed self

Micki Steele / The Detroit News

Mourners gathered fora visitation Saturday afternoon for the 14-year-old Huron Township girl who hanged herself Monday after withstanding taunts from schoolmates about a non-consensual sex act with an 18-year-old senior.

Samantha Kelly's cream casket was topped with a large spray of pink flowers and surrounded by floral arrangements as family and friends consoled one another and talked in a chapel of the Michigan Memorial Funeral Homein Flat Rock.

Photos of the girl along with stuffed animals and mementos were displayed on the back wall.

"It's not even imaginable to think that she felt she wasn't worth being here," said Shaunna Reynolds, 30, a former neighbor of Samantha's mother, June Justice, when she lived in Flat Rock's Walnut Creek Apartments.

ReynoldssaidJustice seemed numb during the visitation.

"She's here, but her mind is not really here," she said.

Justicetold police on Sep. 27 that her daughter, a Huron High School freshman, had sex with Joseph Tarnopolski the night before in his parents' mobile home, eight doors down. Both youths told police and school officials the act was consensual.

But Tarnopolski was charged Oct. 12 with one count of third-degree criminal sexual conduct, punishable by up to 15 years in prison, because children under 16 cannot consent to sex under Michigan law. He was released on bond and allowed to return school, where administrators agreed to keep Samantha and Tarnopolski apart.

When the girl and her mother later appeared on WJBK-TV (Channel 2) to express concerns about slow justice and efforts to transfer Samantha to another school, students and neighbors openly took sides.

Samantha tried to commit suicide with prescription drugs in late October, her family said, and she missed a week of school, returning Monday.

The felony charge against Tarnopolski was dismissed Wednesday due to insufficient evidence — the victim's testimony.

Samantha's funeral will be held at 1 p.m. Sunday at Michigan Memorial Funeral Home in Flat Rock. 313-222-2620

Liverpool,PA: Bullying cited by Pa. teen who killed himself

The Associated Press 

Tuesday, November 9, 2010; 3:18 PM

LIVERPOOL, Pa. -- A high-school freshman who committed suicide by running into the path of a tractor-trailer last week left behind a note that said he wanted to draw attention to the problem of bullying, his mother said Tuesday.

Fourteen-year-old Brandon Bitner complained about teasing and name-calling when he was in middle school, but after he entered Midd-West High School in Middleburg this year, he began concealing his pain from school officials and his family.
"He didn't want to burden other people with his problems," his mother, Tammy Simpson, said in a telephone interview as the family prepared for Wednesday's funeral in this rural central Pennsylvania community. "I'm sure he felt that, if somebody said something, (the teasing) would get even worse."
State police said Bitner walked several miles from his family's home in Mount Pleasant Mills before killing himself early Friday near Liverpool.

Simpson described her only son as a soft-spoken youth who aspired to be a classical violinist and had many female friends. His note said he was tired of being called names like "faggot" and "sissy," according to The Patriot-News in Harrisburg.
Simpson said her son "never told us" what his sexual orientation was but that she didn't care.
"He was the most wonderful child anyone could ask for," she said.
In his note, Bitner cited an encounter with another student in the school cafeteria several days before his death as "the straw that broke the camel's back," Simpson said.
The incident in question occurred Nov. 1, four days before his death, during a program that high-school principal Cynthia Hutchinson said is designed to promote positive behavior among students. Among other things, several students take turns wearing the costume of the school's mascot - a mustang - and roam around the cafeteria high-fiving, hugging and dancing with students during lunch periods, she said.
The young man wearing the costume "hugged a fair number of students throughout the cafeteria that day and Brandon was one of them, but that was all that happened. It was absolutely innocent," the principal said in a telephone interview.
Simpson, however, said her son thought he was being ridiculed.
The student in the mustang costume has a reputation of being "kindhearted and would never do anything to hurt or offend anyone else," Hutchinson said. "I can only guess that (Bitner) misunderstood and misinterpreted."
Wesley Knapp, the Midd-West School District superintendent, said the suicide prompted him to re-evaluate the safeguards that the school district has set up to prevent bullying.
"When you lose one of your students, it's painful," he said. "We all ask ourselves what could we have done perhaps to have prevented it."