An 11-year-old New Jersey girl who died days after an attempted suicide in a middle school bathroom had been relentlessly bullied and reported the harassment to school officials, her mother said.
The girl was found unresponsive in the bathroom stall at F. W. Holbein School in Mount Holly on Feb. 6 and died two days later, the Burlington County Prosecutor’s Office said.
Felicia LoAlbo-Melendez had been bullied for years, the girl’s mother, Elaina LoAlbo, said.
LoAlbo didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment Friday, but told NBC Philadelphia that her daughter was regularly taunted by classmates.
“They called her a furry. She was not a furry. They called her gay. They called her straight. They called her bi. They called her all kinds of things.”
“My daughter was being tortured within the walls of that school,” she added.
Felicia and her mother had raised concerns about the bullying, but they were ignored, LoAlbo said.
The mother said she reported the bullying to Holbein authorities four times in person, and her daughter sent about a dozen emails to her school counselor, the latest one four days before her death, NBC Philadelphia reported.
“She’s telling her teachers. The teachers were witnesses to most of the bullying, physical altercations that were happening in classrooms and on school trips,” LoAlbo told NBC Philadelphia.
The girl’s death came two weeks after her father died from pancreatic cancer, LoAlbo said.
The Burlington County Prosecutor’s Office said in a March 29 statement that its investigation, “which included a review of the school’s surveillance cameras, determined that she was alone in the restroom when this tragic action occurred. The investigation further determined that no foul play was involved.”
Prosecutors said that they would grant the mother’s request to view the surveillance recording.
Robert Mungo, superintendent of the Mount Holly Township School District, said the school system cooperated with the prosecutor’s…
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