A gay teen in Tennessee killed himself on Friday after leaving a note in a trash can that read “please help me mom.” Phillip Parker, 14, hanged himself in his foster parents’ bathroom in Gordonsville after one year of constant bullying. Click below to find out more.
“He kept telling me he had a rock on his chest,” Ruby Harris, Phillip’s grandmother, told the station. “He just wanted to take the rock off where he could breathe.”
The family said it reported the bullying to Gordonsville High School officials on many occasions, but the situation kept getting worse.
An official told WSMV that the school district is coming up with a plan to address the issue with students on Monday.
“He shouldn’t have had to kill himself to be brought to life,” the teen’s father, also named Phillip, told the station.
The teen’s mother, the subject of the note found in the trash, says that she did not realize the level of her son’s pain until it was too late.
“I should have [known] something was wrong, but he seemed happy,” Gena Parker told News Channel 5 in Nashville. “After he did what he did, we found out a lot that we didn’t know, and there is a lot of bullying that goes on at the school.”
The tragedy comes one month after another gay Tennessee teen, Jacob Rogers, took his own life, and just a week after Eric James Borges, who made an anti-suicide video encouraging other gay kids to keep fighting, killed himself in California.
A candlelight vigil was held Monday night in Gordonsville to honor Phillip’s memory.
