These images show two versions of 8-year-old Gabriel Taye: a smiling boy at the store and helping in the kitchen, next to blurred security stills from a few days before he took his own life.
These images show two versions of 8-year-old Gabriel Taye: a smiling boy at the store and helping in the kitchen, next to blurred security stills from a few days before he took his own life.
Taye was a third grader at Carson Elementary in Cincinnati when, according to his family’s lawsuit, another student pulled him to the ground in a school bathroom on January 24, 2017.
He lay motionless on the floor for roughly 7 minutes while classmates reportedly walked past, laughed, and kicked him before a staff member revived him.
His mother said the school only told her Taye had fainted, without explaining what the footage actually showed.
2 days later, on January 26, he was reportedly bullied again in the same bathroom, with other students taking his water bottle and trying to flush it down the toilet. He told a teacher, but the lawsuit says nothing came of it.
That evening, his mother found him unresponsive at home. Despite CPR and paramedics, he could not be revived.
The county coroner ruled that Taye had taken his own life, and prosecutors closed the case without filing charges.
His family sued Cincinnati Public Schools, alleging the district concealed years of bullying against him and destroyed surveillance footage.
In 2020, a federal appeals court ruled his d*ath was a foreseeable result of the cover-up.
CPS agreed to a 3 million dollar settlement in 2021, along with anti-bullying reforms and a memorial at the school bearing his name.
