Background: Kelaia Turner in the hospital after her 2023 suicide attempt (Ty Turner/Facebook). Inset: Kelaia Turner (Ty Turner/Facebook).
The family of a South Carolina girl who suffered permanent injuries after a suicide attempt brought on by persistent bullying has sued the girl’s school district for negligence.
According to the lawsuit filed on Nov. 12, Kelaia Turner first reported that she was being bullied by other students at Greenville County’s Dr. Phinnize J. Fisher Middle School in August 2021. She was 11 years old at the time. But the bullying was not only ongoing for a year and a half — it was allegedly enabled by some of the school’s teachers.
The lawsuit accused the school and nine faculty and administrative members of the middle school of “negligent, grossly negligent, reckless, and wanton acts” that led to Kelaia Turner’s March 2023 suicide attempt.
The suit stated that in December 2021, students referred to Turner as “a man and roach in [teacher] Olivia Bennett’s class.” Bennett was accused of being “complicit” in the bullying and “said nothing to the other students to stop it.”
When one student reportedly asked “Where’s the roach?” Bennett allegedly pointed to Turner.
In an October 2024 post on Facebook, Kelaia’s mother Ty Turner listed several more insults and racist slurs that classmates had called her daughter including “Mustache Face,” “Ugmo,” and “FatBlackUgly.”
Another story recounted in the suit was an instance from May 2022 in which several classmates of Turner played a racist YouTube video in class in an attempt to taunt her. The teacher of that class, John Teer, “allowed the song to be played without any comment on its offensiveness, nor any reprimand to or discussion with the student who played it.”
There were also accounts of physical altercations between Kelaia and other students that resulted in Kelaia being disciplined, but not the other students. An October 2022 incident described a student repeatedly “pushing” Kelaia, but the only action taken by the faculty was them asking to have the next incident reported to them. The lawsuit stated, “The bullying continued, resulting in [Kelaia]’s clothes being hung, water being poured on them, and then thrown into the trash.”
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The constant bullying culminated in the events of March 17, 2023, when Kelaia Turner, then 12 years old, “attempted suicide by hanging as a direct result of the bullying of five Fischer Middle students.”
Ty Turner told WYFF, a local NBC affiliate, that she found her daughter at 11:18 p.m. “hanging.” When paramedics arrived, “She was cool to the touch, blood was coming out of her nose, and she had already urinated on herself. She had fully committed to what it was that she was attempting to do, and she was gone for eight whole minutes. They couldn’t find her pulse, and they couldn’t find her heartbeat. There were grown men in the room crying.”
Kelaia Turner was revived and subsequently spent 101 days in the hospital, several of those weeks in a comatose state. She ultimately suffered “significant brain damage.” Ty Turner described her daughter’s current state to WFYY, saying, “Kelaia has no control currently over her body. She’s total care, nonverbal, on a trach, on a feeding tube. She requires around the clock care that, for the most part, is administered by her father and I. We’ve recently gotten the help of a nurse three days a week.”
She added, “It’s an absolute mountain.”
To make matters worse, in the days after Kelaia was admitted to the hospital and being treated in the ICU for 31 days, some students were given access to her while she was unconscious and took pictures of her with the intent to mock her further on social media. The lawsuit stated that “[a]fter the pictures were circulated, [another student] also assisted in spreading rumors about [Kelaia]’s injuries.”
The day after those students posted pictures of an unconscious Kelaia, her mother — unaware of the photos — emailed the school to lodge a formal complaint “regarding the lack of enforcement of Fischer Middle’s anti-bullying policies,” saying that Kelaia “had been reporting incidents of bullying since 2021 with no intervention.”
The school’s principals responded that the school had “a zero-tolerance policy for bullying but no way to enforce it.”
Ty Turner found out about the photos weeks later.
The lawsuit stated that “[a]s a direct result of the bullying which had occurred since 2021, [Kelaia Turner] attempted suicide by hanging and is now on total life care with severe brain damage. She requires 24-hour care.”
Kelaia’s family is seeking actual and punitive damages against the school and the nine named defendants to be determined by a jury.
Since coming forward with their story — the Turner family had initially remained anonymous in their lawsuit citing the potential “embarrassment and publicity” following the months of bullying — Ty Turner started a GoFundMe page to help with some of Kelaia’s medical and care expenses. It has already exceeded its $15,000 goal.
Law & Crime reached out to Greenville County School District and the Turner family’s attorneys. They did not respond immediately to the request for comments.
