South Carolina Family Sues School District After Daughter Attempts Suicide Due To Racist Bullying, Students Even Leaked Photos From Hospital

After Kelaia Turner was hospitalized for her suicide attempt, students brought in to visit her allegedly took photos to mock her.

A South Carolina family is suing their daughter’s school district after bullying continued at the hospital following the tween’s attempted suicide.

According to Law and Crime, photos of a hospitalized Kelaia Turner began to spread around Dr. Phinnize J. Fisher Middle School. After attempting suicide due to incessant bullying by her classmates, Turner decided to hang herself in March 2023 to escape the harassment.

While the 12-year-old survived the attempt, she endured permanent injuries. While lying in a near comatose state, students brought in to visit the young girl took photos of her condition to further mock her. The lawsuit, filed on Nov. 12, accuses the school and nine faculty and administrative employees of negligence, which led to Turner’s suicide attempt.

The legal filing also dictates that Turner reported the bullying happening as early as August 2021, when she was 11 years old. However, the racist harassment and taunting continued until her attempt, with no alleged actions to stop it by her teachers.

The lawsuit detailed that Turner was called a “man” and “roach” while in one of her teacher’s, Olivia Bennett, class. However, the filing deemed Bennett “complicit,” as students called the middle schooler discriminatory names, also claiming the woman did not urge any of the students to stop. Bennett also allegedly pointed to Turner when a student asked “Where’s the roach?” to incite more bullying.

In October, the young girl’s mother, Ty Turner, took to social media to spread awareness on her daughter’s experience. She hashtagged all the names her daughter reportedly had said to her, including “FatBlackUgly,” “NappyHead,” “Ugmo,” and “Trans.”

She emphasized that the school district in Greenville County also has a zero-tolerance policy for bullying. However, in cases where the school administrators stepped in, they only told Turner to report the next altercation.

The bullying became physical as well, with students hanging Turner’s clothes to pour water on the items and throwing them in the trash. The ongoing issue, with no sense of relief from the adults at the school, prompted the tween to try and take her own life.

“She was cool to the touch, blood was coming out of her nose, and she had already urinated on herself,” recalled her mother of the attempt. “She had fully committed to what it was that she was attempting to do, and she was gone for eight whole minutes. They couldn’t find her pulse, and they couldn’t find her heartbeat. There were grown men in the room crying.”

Now, Turner remains on a feeding tube as she suffers from severe brain damage. Her parents have taken on new roles as medical caretakers.

Her mother added, “Kelaia has no control currently over her body. She’s total care, nonverbal, on a trach, on a feeding tube. She requires around-the-clock care that, for the most part, is administered by her father and I. We’ve recently gotten the help of a nurse three days a week.”

The family seeks actual and punitive damages for the school’s lack of action to protect their daughter’s well-being. They have also started a GoFundMe to help with her medical care expenses. They have earned over $60k thus far, already surpassing their $15k goal, but they are still accepting donations as she continues healing.