Christine Haveford
It is devastating beyond comprehension that two beautiful children are not here today.
Eight-year-old Imani McCray took her own life after reportedly reading a news story on Facebook about a Colorado girl who hanged herself in November.
Little Imani had been sent to her room for a time out just before she committed suicide.
Family members frantically tried to revive her and called 911.
The horrifying incident took place in Newark at around 1.40pm on Sunday.
Imani had a faint pulse when paramedics arrived, but sadly she was pronounced dead at the University Hospital in Newark.
Now Essex County prosecutors are working to determine if Imani read the story of 10-year-old Ashawnty Davis.
Prosecutors says Imani may have been emotional after being told off and hanged herself in a case of play acting gone terribly wrong.
Ashawnty took her own life after a video of her being bullied was posted online.
‘It’s just devastating,’ her father, Anthony Davis, told KDVR-TV. ‘She was just a child of joy and she brought joy to everyone.’
In late October, Ashawnty, a fifth-grade student at Sunrise Elementary in Aurora, was involved in a fight after school.
It was recorded by another student, who then sent the footage to an app called Musical.ly.
In the video, Ashawnty and another girl are seen fighting as a group of kids gather to watch.
Ashawnty’s mother, Latoshia Harris, said that her daughter confronted a girl who was bullying her. ‘I saw my daughter was scared,’ Harris said.
‘She was devastated when she found out that it had made it to Musical.ly,’ Davis said.
All her classmates watched the video and Ashawnty was subjected to frequent teasing and bullying at school, according to her parents.
They said that the abuse turned her into a different person. She simply could not handle the shame.
‘My daughter came home two weeks later and hanged herself in the closet,’ Harris said.
Now Ashawnty’s parents are urging others to be on the lookout for signs of ‘bullycide’ (when a child is driven to suicide because of bullying.)
‘We have to stop it and we have to stop it within our kids,’ Davis said.
‘I want other parents to know that it’s happening,’ Harris said. ‘That was my baby and I love my baby and I just want mothers to listen.’
Imani was taken off life support at Children’s Hospital Colorado following her suicide attempt.
Authorities have confirmed that there is no indication that Imani was being bullied.
Her family are struggling to make sense of the tragedy as they organize her funeral.
She would have turned nine years old next week.
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