OK - Nex Benedict, 16 year old student died after being beaten in school restroom, Owasso, Feb 8 2024

[NoSpoonFeeding]

<rsbm>

Color me dumb on this one. Presumably hospital samples are acquired prior to autopsy, so why would autopsy levels be higher than the hospital samples?

Autopsy is able to use the best sample, femoral blood. See the chart table 2 for examples of differences, unless you want to read the details.

Drug concentrations in post-mortem femoral blood compared with therapeutic concentrations in plasma

Therapeutic drug concentrations measured in plasma are of limited value as reference intervals for interpretation in post-mortem (PM) toxicology. In this study, drug concentration distributions were studied in PM femoral venous blood from 57 903 Finnish ...

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

 

[LaborDayRN]

I'm not happy, but I'm not surprised.
Schools punish the bullies and the victims equally. They call it "zero tolerance".
It is not working, btw. It never has.

Schools do not care about your child, they care about liability. Always call the police (not security) to report assault, especially on campus. I've learned this first hand. Get that report, you need documentation!!

It sounds like Nex had multiple notes that the police believe are suicidal in nature? So not just one, clearly worded message? I feel I still need more information.

I always find it interesting that when we see these fights on cameras that are clearly placed by the shools up high to monitor if there are problems, we never see a staff member coming in to stop the melee.
Do schools no longer have security officers or "Bouncers" as we called them many moons ago?

 

[PrairieWind]

I always find it interesting that when we see these fights on cameras that are clearly placed by the shools up high to monitor if there are problems, we never see a staff member coming in to stop the melee.
Do schools no longer have security officers or "Bouncers" as we called them many moons ago?

I think it depends on the school. Some districts eliminated resource officers. I don't know of any public schools that employ any private security. Teachers, aides, etc are no longer likely to intervene in a full melee at a high school just for their own safety. If you have several kids fighting or several on one, it very well may be a while for officers to respond to a 911 call and that is assuming a call is made quickly.

 

[housewife]

Did any of the attackers lose consciousness?

 

[DoctorRose]

I think it depends on the school. Some districts eliminated resource officers. I don't know of any public schools that employ any private security. Teachers, aides, etc are no longer likely to intervene in a full melee at a high school just for their own safety. If you have several kids fighting or several on one, it very well may be a while for officers to respond to a 911 call and that is assuming a call is made quickly.

If I were a teacher I wouldn’t walk into a fight. That wouldn’t be part of my job description. I’d call whoever is in charge of discipline to the scene. If I were super athletic (I am absolutely not) to where I could safely intervene then sure. Otherwise nope. They don’t get paid nearly enough to add bodily protection to their job duties.

 

[DoctorRose]

Do we know that Nex actually lost consciousness? “Black out” could mean Nex doesn’t remember what happened next due to adrenaline, anger, etc. or like blocked the next few seconds out. Similar to saying like “I don’t know what happened next, it was all a blur”.

I didn’t calculate from the ng/ml but you would have to take an obscene amount of both Benadryl and the antidepressant to be fatal. Like you could in no way do it on accident. I’m picturing just like straight from the bottle for both. That’s why tue manner of death has been listed suicide. They’re saying that the overdose was fatal and that Nex took those meds themself. Nobody else administered the meds against Nex’s will.

The reason for this overdose isn’t part of the autopsy because that’s not the immediate cause of death. Regardless of what exactly was happening at that school, Nex believed that it was not tolerable. Could have been something they thought was not tolerable just in the moments it took to take those meds. Or something that had been chronically intolerable.

Other factors I want to know are did a head injury or meds from the hospital perhaps effect Nex’s mood and/or ability to think rationally.

And had there been signs of mental health issues prior to these bullying issues going on at school.

In other words, what contributed to the moment when Nex took too much of the meds? Were there warning signs and are there safeguards that could be put in place to “tag” a kid as needing help before it’s too late?

 

[bootsinmass]

Sadly the rate of suicide attempts for lgbtq youth is ~14% per The Trevor Project's report from 2023. The rate is higher for people who are trans or gender nonconforming. (~20% per the same report; prior studies show the statistic anywhere from 32% to 50%+ internationally). Trans/gnc youth are almost 7x as likely to attempt suicide as someone who is not lgbtq (again depends on which numbers you pull; but all agree that there is a significant correlation).

It really sucks to see publicly how that comes about. Sad and scary to think of what Nex's friends are going through at school now, since it doesn't sound like the school administration has done much to support those who have been hurt by this.