An 11-year-old Springfield boy, traumatized by school bullies, tied one end of an electrical cord to a support beam and cinched the other around his throat, hanging himself inside a stairwell of his family’s home, police and relatives said.
Carl Walker-Hoover left a note for his family in which he apologized, told his mother he loved her and left his video games to his brother, police said.
“It’s heart-wrenching,” Springfield police Sgt. John Delaney told the Herald. “It’s not uncommon for a police officer to find a person hanging, but to find an 11-year-old - it can jar even the most veteran officer. Most cops have kids.”
The boy’s aunt found him hanging about 8 p.m., Delaney said. Cops attempted to revive the boy, but he was pronounced dead at the scene.
Carl was a student at New Leadership Charter School, where bullies relentlessly targeted him, his mother told Springfield’s newspaper, The Republican. In an interview with the paper Wednesday, Sirdeaner Walker, 44, said she made repeated calls to the school in an attempt to end the torment, but was unsuccessful.
A conflict Monday with a girl there apparently proved the tipping point for her son, she told the paper.
Calls to the school yesterday after hours were not answered. A message left at the home of former political activist Henry Thomas, chairman of the school’s board of directors, was not returned. A relative of the boy who answered the phone at the family’s home declined to comment.
According to data the state released Wednesday, one person dies from suicide every day in Massachusetts. However, of the 124 children between the ages of 1 and 14 who died in 2007 - the most recent data available - suicide was not among the top 10 causes of death.
ojohnson@bostonherald.com
