According to lawsuit filed Monday, a 15-year-old boy took his own life after other students continued to be bully him over a false rumor that he was unvaccinated.
The suit filed against the Latin School of Chicago claims administrators at the private college prep school — which charges more than $40,000 annually in tuition — devoted “willful failure” to stop the endless bullying, the Chicago Tribune reported.
Student kills himself after bullying about his vaccination status
Nate Bronstein transfered to a new school and students started spreading a rumor that he was unvaccinated. Nate actually had been vaccinated.
The kids told Nate to kill himself and he did.https://t.co/cItfUampfn
— Frank Grimes Jr. (@FrankGrimes_Jr) April 28, 2022
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The Cook County filing named the school, numerous employees and parents of the alleged bullies as defendants. The late teen, recognized as N.B. in the suit, transferred to the school due to its in-person learning during the coronavirus pandemic, the lawsuit states.
A student whose parents are documented in the lawsuit then began circulating a rumor that the 10th-grader, Nate Bronstein, was unvaccinated, according to the lawsuit.
Nate actually had been vaccinated, the lawsuit reads, but he was still harassed regularly due to the false rumor that spreaded across the school. The boy’s parents, Robert and Rosellene Bronstein, even reached out to the other student’s family about the endless badgering, the suit claims.
But the harassment only began to progress — with Nate being told by a teacher in class that he was going “nowhere in life,” according to the lawsuit.
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The lawsuit also reveals that the student was bullied on social media as well. Students would say mean things to the boy on Snapchat. The parents say, Nate spoke with a school advisor regarding the issue, but none of the students who were bullying him online were disciplined.
Rosellene Bronstein had also reached out to a counselor about the bullying, saying she feared her son may hurt himself, but the school downplayed her concerns as “family issues,” the lawsuit claims.