Missouri death highlights dangers of bullying

The bedroom bears the telltale signs of a typical boy on the cusp of his teen years: discarded food wrappers, video game consoles, clothes scattered on the floor.

The disarray hides tragedy inside the suburban Kansas City home. The room is a memorial to 12-year-old Brandon Myers, who killed himself in February 2007.

For Kim Myers, Brandon’s death is the result of what she calls incessant bullying that her son’s teachers and other administrators at Voy Spears Jr. Elementary School failed to stop.

“He was teased in class on the day he died for acting depressed,” said Myers, a single parent. “He was screaming for help. If he had got the help he needed, he would still be alive.”

Teen suicide has long been considered one of the greatest risks faced by vulnerable adolescents. But an increasing number of mental health experts are warning that younger children such as Brandon are also susceptible.

A nationwide survey of more than 15,000 students in grades six to 10 showed that 30% reported experience with bullying -- 11% as targets, 13% as bullies themselves and an additional 6% who said they had been both aggressor and victim. The survey was published in 2001.

Nationally, more than 3,000 children ages 10 through 14 committed suicide from 1995 through 2004, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In Missouri, 34 children in that age group took their own lives from 2001 through 2005, state records show.

Many of the details of how Brandon was harassed -- and the school’s response -- are incomplete. Myers has hired an attorney and said she planned a wrongful-death suit against the Blue Springs School District. She and her ex-husband, Brandon’s father, don’t want to jeopardize the pending lawsuit by discussing it publicly.

A lawyer for the school district said officials would discuss only Brandon’s “educational experience” with the Associated Press, and then only with his parents’ permission.

The case is not without precedent. In 2005, a teenager from Tonganoxie, Kan., who was bullied for years by classmates who believed he was gay, was awarded $440,000 in a settlement against his school district. The young man, who says he is not gay, was harassed with homophobic slurs from seventh grade until he quit school his junior year.

The direct link between bullying and those self-inflicted deaths is impossible to determine. But as in the case of Megan Meier -- a 13-year-old suburban St. Louis girl who committed suicide after receiving cruel messages on her MySpace page -- the social pressures that drive some children to suicide are immense, said bullying expert Hilda Quiroz.

“Schools are social settings,” said Quiroz, a former teacher who now works for the Westlake Village, Calif.-based National School Safety Center. “And in social settings, there are kids who wield power.”

Bullying victims direct their anger in two directions, Quiroz said: at themselves or toward others, including their tormentors.

“Children sometimes turn inward and hurt themselves, or they turn outward and bring weapons to school,” she said.

For Brandon, life didn’t come easy. Born with a cleft palate, he endured several corrective surgeries that improved his smile but didn’t get rid of a speech impediment.

His parents divorced when he was 5. Diagnosed with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder in the third grade, and later with depression, he took a daily chemical cocktail to combat those impulses and he saw a counselor outside school.

In the days and weeks leading up to his suicide, Brandon dropped several hints to classmates and teachers that his troubles might have grown life-threatening, Kim Myers said. She didn’t learn of those warning signs until it was too late.

The day after Christmas would have been Brandon’s 13th birthday. His absence made the holiday a painful one for his older brother and sister and his parents too.

“This is the first year he’s not been around,” said his father, Randy Myers. “We’re struggling.”

Down the block from Brandon’s house, a solitary plaque marks his shortened life, a tribute to the passion that drove him to awaken in the predawn darkness each morning so he could fish at the neighborhood lake before school.

“Forever Fishing,” the plaque reads. “Brandon Myers.”

Fishing was an escape for Brandon. He would go fishing with his buddy Trystyn, or with his mother’s boyfriend at nearby Lake Lotawana. Summertime meant bullfrog-hunting trips with his grandfather in southwest Missouri.

Inside Trystyn Wagner’s home, toy frogs of all shapes and sizes surround a hallway display of baseball cards, fishing photos and other reminders of his late best friend.

A few days before Brandon’s death, the two friends argued over a girl. They quickly patched up the dispute, but guilt from that encounter and its proximity to Brandon’s suicide hangs over Trystyn, his mother said.

“He said he wanted to be next to Brandon,” said Amy Wagner, who said she has since moved Trystyn and his younger sister to a private school because of what she calls her son’s own bullying experience.

“It’s just been a nightmare,” she said.

During an investigation of Brandon’s death, Trystyn told police that Brandon drew a picture of himself hanging from a rope. The drawing was found by another student and turned in to a teacher, according to a police report.

Another classmate later shared a note from Brandon that further warned of suicide.

I “have had enuf of this crap[p]y life,” the note reads. “I will hang myself tonight so if you have anything to say to me I suggest you tell me before 4:35 p.m. tonight.”

The note, a copy of which was provided to the AP by Kim Myers, asked the unknown classmate to tell other students in Brandon’s class and listed the phone numbers for two students he wished to alert.

Kim Myers said she first learned of the warning note in May, nearly three months after Brandon’s death, from a Lee’s Summit police officer. The note had been given to school officials on March 2 by another parent.

The unidentified student’s mother told police and school officials that she found the note folded on a table in her home two days after Brandon’s death, and brought it to school later that week.

Brandon’s unkempt bedroom isn’t the only reminder that Kim Myers carries of his brief life. She wears a frog ring on her right hand, a Mother’s Day gift to commemorate her son’s amphibious passion.

She keeps a jar of green BB gun pellets in his honor -- tiny memorials that have mysteriously turned up in unlikely places, including the doctor’s office where she works and the beaches of Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, where she and her mother traveled to seek peace after Brandon’s death.

“As soon as I picked it up, the tide came in and washed everything away,” she recalled.

“I think it’s him talking to me . . . letting me know he’s around. He’s watching over me.”