https://sg.style.yahoo.com/news/nude-shapchat-leaked-by-friends-drives-15-year-old-141729542.html
A family in Tampa expected to be celebrating the completion of 15-year-old Tovonna Holton’s freshman year at Wiregrass Ranch High School, but instead they’re preparing her funeral — and it’s all because of cyberbullying.
The teen used her mother’s handgun to take her own life this past Sunday after finding out that friends had allegedly filmed her taking a shower and posted it to Snapchat without her permission, according a report by Tampa news channel WFLA. “I said, ‘My baby! My baby!’” a visibly distraught Levon Holton-Teamer, Holton’s mother, recalled through tears in a video for WFLA. “I couldn’t get in the bathroom … so I tried to get in, and I look down. I seen a puddle of blood.” Holton-Teamer told the station that she tried to save her daughter by applying pressure to her head before dialing 911.
The grieving mother added that she had gone to the school repeatedly to report Holton’s ongoing bullying, but “wasn’t always satisfied with the responses she got.” She was thinking of pulling her daughter out of the school before Sunday’s tragedy occurred.
Suicide due to cyberbullying is sadly not uncommon. According to DoSomething.org — “one of the largest global orgs for young people and social change” — victims of bullying are two to nine times more likely to commit suicide than average kids, and almost 43 percent report they’ve been bullied online. Most shockingly, 90 percent of teens who have witnessed cyberbullying say they’ve simply ignored it.
