Jamel Myles
Jamel Myles
A nine-year-old boy in Denver, Colorado, has killed himself less than a week into his fourth schoolyear after he came out as gay to his class. The mother says the boy faced a torrent of abuse, including being told to end his life.

Jamel Myles died by hanging around 11 p.m. on Thursday last week, The Denver County Coroner's Office confirmed on Monday. The boy was a fourth-grade student of Joe Shoemaker Elementary School and had just started a new school year.

The boy's bereft mother, Leia Pierce, told KDVR-TV that nine-year-old Myles had confided in her during the summer break, telling her he was gay and that he would prefer to wear girls' clothes.

Pierce said the boy's confession took her completely by surprise.

"And he looked so scared when he told me. He was like, 'Mom I'm gay.' And I thought he was playing, so I looked back because I was driving, and he was all curled up, so scared," she said, adding that she reassured the boy that she would love him no matter what.

While the mother says that she was supportive of her child's decision, she said it was his classmates' hostility and bullying that made Myles take his own life mere days into the new school year.

"Four days is all it took at school. I could just imagine what they said to him," she said, adding that the nine-year-old had told his sister that children at school were goading him into killing himself.

Pierce believes that those who allegedly bullied her son to the point he could not take it anymore should be held accountable for their actions.

"We should have accountability for bullying. I think the child should. Because the child knows it's wrong."

The accountability should also lie with the offending children's parents, as they are "either teaching them to be like that or they're treating them like that," Pierce insists.


Comment: The causes of bullying are much more complex than that, in the same way that an adult who commits crimes can come from a very caring and upstanding family.


The news of Myles' suicide sent shockwaves across the community, prompting the school district to dispatch crisis teams consisting of psychologists and social workers to the school on Monday. A hotline for parents has been established in connection with the incident, that is being investigated by police as suicide. Denver Public Schools spokesman Will Jones said that the fourth and fifth-grade teachers were instructed to get in touch with all the families of their students by Monday evening, vowing to provide extra support if needed.