A
nine-year-old girl is thought to have committed suicide in the bathroom of her
home on Sunday after telling family members that she 'wanted to die'.
The girl, identified by police
as Justice Williams, was reportedly found by her distraught mother hanging from
the shower frame in the family's Bronx, New York home around 8.20 p.m. on
Sunday.
Police investigators believe
she may have hanged herself because she was struggling to adapt to her new
half-sibling - and her parents had placed her in therapy last year after she
told them she was suicidal.
The mother, Tamiqua Torres, 31,
went to check on her daughter because she felt that she had taken too long in
the shower and upon entering found her daughter with a white cloth strung
around her neck, supported by the metal shower frame.
Friends of the family told the
New York Daily News that the nine-year-old had been seeing a therapist since
becoming troubled by the birth of her new half-brother.
Torres and her new husband,
Raymond Torres had welcomed their new baby into the world eight-months-ago and
Raymond had become Justice's stepfather.
However, Justice began telling
family members that 'she wanted to die' during her mother's pregnancy - which
set alarm bells ringing, causing her mother and stepfather to send her to
therapy.
Torres had used her pregnancy
blog to explain her worries and struggles with her daughter after discovering
she was going to be mother for the second time.
'We were as happy as happy good
be until one day my then 8 year old woke up and decided that she wasn't exactly
thrilled about being a Big Sister,' wrote Torres.
'I mean who could blame her,
she spent the last 8 years all to herself being spoiled by everyone only having
to share while in school.'
However, by the time the baby
had arrived over the summer, Torres believed that Justice had adjusted.
'Fast forward to August when he
arrived and she was happy and reassured that although her world has forever
changed she loves him more than she thought she would,' wrote Torres in her
blog.
'The road my family and I
traveled to get where we are now was not smooth we faced many road bumps but
over came them as a stronger family unit than I imagined us to be.'
Neighbors describe the horrific
scene that they were confronted with on Sunday afternoon when Torres rushed out
of the house with her little girl in her arms.
'I just saw the mom and the
baby. She was frantic,' said Michael Millan.
'All you heard was them talking
to each other, saying she was in cardiac arrest. She looked panicked. It looked
she did all her crying by the time we got here. The officers told us to move,
get out the way. Then we stayed inside until a cop knocked on our door.'
Neighbor Bernadette Diaz, who
lives on the floor below the girl’s three-story house on Wallace Avenue in the
Morris Park section, found it hard to grasp.
'It’s hard to believe that a
9-year-old even has a concept of how to do it. I mean, she must have been going
through something very terrible to even think of that,' she said to CBS Local.
Another neighbor named Mia, who
lives one floor below the family said she couldn't understand what had
happened.
'This is a weird world that we
live in to have a 9 year old actually think of killing themselves,' she said.
'The little girl, she had her
whole life ahead of her. Doesn’t deserve anything like that, especially those
thoughts that go through her mind.'
The Centers for Disease Control
and Prevention said fewer than one in 100,000 children ages 10 to 14 years old
commit suicide each year.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Your Comments Are Welcomed!