Nonbinary Teen's Death After School Bathroom Fight Sparks Outrage
The Independent that Nex had faced bullying at Owasso High School for more than a year."I didn't know how bad it had gotten," the mother said.Sue Benedict said the bullying that her child confronted intensified early last year, just a few months after Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt signed a bill mandating that students in public schools use bathrooms that matched the gender on their birth certificates.Newsweek reached out via email on Wednesday to the OPD and Nex's family via GoFundMe for comment.Sue Benedict said the bullying became violent on February 7 after Nex suffered head injuries during a "physical altercation" at Owasso High School, which the OPD confirmed it is investigating.Sue Benedict told The Independent that school officials called her to come in and when she arrived, she found Nex with bruises over their face and eyes and scratches on the back of their head.Nex told their mother that they and a transgender student at the school had gotten into a fight with three older students in a women's bathroom, Sue Benedict said.
The mother said that Nex was knocked to the ground during the scuffle and hit their head.OPD said that around 3:30 p.m. that day, officers were called to a local hospital for a report of a student who had been involved in a physical altercation at Owasso High.
The police department noted that no report of the fight was made to the OPD before the call from the hospital.All the students involved in the altercation "walked under their own power to the assistant principal's office and nurse's office," OPD said in a case update on Wednesday."Each of the students involved in the altercation was given a health assessment by a registered nurse at the school and it was determined that ambulance service was not required," OPD said.
