Accusations of Bullying After Death of Teenager

Nicole Bengiveno/The New York Times

Keith Cummings said bullying “definitely played a major role” in his niece’s death.

By MATT FLEGENHEIMER
Published: January 3, 2012

Amanda Cummings was not shy about her interests: animals and poetry, shopping and Katy Perry music, summer afternoons by the swimming pool and excursions to Manhattan, where she hoped to live some day.

Amanda Cummings, 15, died six days after a witness saw her jump in front of a bus.

But in the days and weeks before her death, her family said, Amanda, 15, often concealed what some friends seemed to know: she was being bullied, in person and on Facebook, by peers from her Staten Island high school.

Amanda died Monday at Staten Island University Hospital, six days after being struck by a southbound Metropolitan Transportation Authority bus on Hylan Boulevard in Dongan Hills, Staten Island. A witness saw her jump in front of the bus around 7:30 p.m., and she was carrying a suicide note in her pocket, the police said.

“It definitely played a major role in it,” Keith Cummings, Amanda’s uncle, said of the bullying. “There’s only so much kids can take.”

Deirdre DeAngelis, the principal of Amanda’s school, New Dorp High School, declined to discuss specifics, but warned against drawing hasty conclusions. “Don’t believe everything you read,” she said.

Mr. Cummings made similar comments in The Staten Island Advance on Tuesday.

You can read the rest of this sad article at The New York Times.

If you, or someone you know is having problems dealing with a bully, please give me a call or email me and I will devote some personal time to helping you learn non violent ways of defeating the bully.

And if you can't afford it.....I will do it for free!

Sensei Chris Feldt

Samurai Karate Studio

Columbia, SC 29229

803-462-9425@gmail.com

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