An 18-year-old high school senior committed suicide Tuesday afternoon in front of her family in their house in Texas City after relentlessly bullied on social media. Brandy Vela killed herself, pointing a gun towards her chest while her dad and the rest of the family sincerely begged her not pull the trigger. The teenager has been cyber-bullied for her weight.
"We tried to persuade her to put the gun down, but she was determined," KHOU quoted Raul Vela, father of the teen, as saying. "It's hard when your daughter tells you to turn around. You feel helpless," he added.
On Tuesday afternoon, Brandy Vela sent her family an email about her plan of killing herself. The family immediately dashed to their house in Texas and found the teenager alive with a gun pointed at her chest. They tried to beg her to put down the gun, but the troubled teen has already decided to kill herself and pulled the trigger.
Brandy's sister, Jackie Vela, said the teenager has always been cyber-bullied about her weight; however, the bullying increased in April. She added that people would create bogus Facebook accounts and would message the teen with really, really means things like why the teenager is still alive.
The fake accounts would say that the teen was asking sex. Brandy's older sister, Jacqueline Vela, said: "They (bullies) would make dating websites of her, and they would put her number, and they would put her picture and lie about her age and say she is giving herself up for sex for free, to call her,"
The father also stated that her daughter had received several harassing calls. He said that sometimes Brandy would not sleep and would call him at night, saying her phone keeps on ringing. The Vela family tried to complain the bullying incidents to the police and to anybody who would like to listen, but they did not get any help. Raul said nobody was willing to help them.
Then the Velas worst nightmare happened. "My heart's broken," Raul Vela said, the Parent Herald has learned. "I lost my angel today," he added. The Texas Police are investigating the incident, and so far, nobody has been detained up to now. Capt. Joe Stanton of Texas Police said to CNN that detectives have interviewed the Vela family and will be contacting some people whom the Velas believe are suspects.
A cyberbullying/bullying statistic conducted by Statistic Brain showed 52 percent of students in the United States had been cyberbullied and 25 percent of teens have repeatedly been reported bullied through the Internet or their cell phones. Cyberbullying is a kind of harassment or bullying that's completed using any electronic gadgets.
