An Indiana fourth-grader took his own life earlier this month after enduring what his family has called severe bullying at the hands of several students.
10-year-old Sammy Teusch had pointed out a fellow classmate to his dad on May 4th while attending his big brother’s soccer game. That classmate along with several others had been relentlessly bullying Sammy, his dad says. The next morning, Sammy died by suicide. He was found in his bedroom by his 13-year-old brother, Xander.
Sammy, the youngest of nine children in a blended family, became the target of relentless bullying shortly after the family relocated from Pensacola, Florida to Greenfield, Indiana, in 2022.
“Sammy was smaller than a lot of the other kids, so it started with that,” Sammy’s father Samuel Teusch told People.
Teusch says he always encouraged his son to find compassion for those who were targeting him, reminding him that other kids may not have a good home with a loving mommy and daddy.
“I would contact the school, it would slow down for a little bit, and then ramp back up.”
After Sammy got glasses in the spring of 2022, the bullying got worse. He thought he’d picked out cool frames that “he absolutely loved … until he went to school the next day,” Teusch says. When Sammy got home, with his glasses in his hand, “He said, ‘I’m never wearing these things again. Today was horrible,’” his dad says. “They were tearing him apart at school and on the bus.”
Sammy often responded to the bullying by hiding under desks, or locking himself in the bathroom. Rather than addressing the bullying that was causing him to hide in the first place, the school often told Teusch that Sammy was a “discipline problem.”
Beyond looks and size, kids attacked Sammy through making fun of his mom, who works as a custodian at the local middle school.
“That was 100,000 times worse than calling him names,” Teusch says. “He would stand up when it came to her. ‘You don’t talk about my mommy.'”
Sammy had been cornered by a bigger, older student who called his sister names and threatened to beat him up.
In another incident, a kid “took Sammy’s iPad out of his hand and hit him in the head with it as hard as he could. He broke his glasses, he cut his face, he gave him a black eye. And they kicked Sammy off the bus,” Teusch says. “This was the fifth or sixth time he was in trouble for hiding or getting hit.”
“We now have a pair of the young boy’s ‘broken glasses’ which now lie on a ‘memorial shrine’ his siblings made,” Teusch told FOX 59.
His parents documented the cuts and scrapes and bumps he came home with from school, Teusch says.
Sammy’s Last Day
On the Saturday before he died, when Sammy pointed out his bullies to his dad, Teusch encouraged his son to stand up to them with him by his side.
“I was thinking me being there would give him some stand up strength to tell the kid, ‘Leave me alone.’” He didn’t.
The family left the game and had an outing downtown Indianapolis before ending the day with hot dogs and roasted marshmallows at home.
Sammy’s sister had a friend over that night and the bully from the soccer game kept calling his sister’s friend’s phone with a message for Sammy: “Oh, you wait until Monday. I’m getting you. I’m getting you,” his dad says. “That happened several times.”
Sammy’s older brother Xander took him to play Roblox and the boys fell asleep on the couch.
The next morning, Sammy was laying with his mom and asked for pancakes. Teusch took Xander to the store with him to get supplies. When the two returned home, he sent Xander to go get Sammy, who had gone to his room.
After opening Sammy’s door, Xander immediately screamed with horror, “Sammy’s dead, Sammy’s dead,” he said. “I’m not kidding, I’m not kidding, I’m not kidding.”
Emergency response teams worked on Sammy for 30 minutes before getting his pulse. After getting him to the hospital, doctors worked to save his life for another hour, but he didn’t make it.
The Greenfield Police Department has an open investigation in Sammy’s case as they interview teachers, students and family members.
Greenfield’s police chief Brian Hartman has been rocked by Sammy’s death.
“I get choked up about it. At the end of the day, regardless [of] the reason for this, it is a sad and devastating time in our society that we actually have children that are 10 years old, younger than that, older than that, who feel that their life is that bad that they have to take their life,” Hartman says. “And it is sad that a 10-year-old even knows how to do this. And I know there’s a lot of blame going around.”
In the weeks since Sammy’s death, his family has struggled to process the insurmountable grief.
“This can’t be fixed,” Teusch says, “So I have to create something to fix it for others.”
He is asking people to sign a petition urging Congress to take up legislation to curb bullying nationwide, seen as a nearly endemic childhood problem but one that can have disastrous consequences.