Tragic death of a girl in Manhattan.
By Deepak Chitnis
WASHINGTON, DC: A 15 year-old girl from New York City committed suicide last Thursday, February 13, by jumping from the roof of her grandmother’s apartment building in Upper West Side Manhattan.
Jayah Shaileya Ram Jackson was noted for being psychologically disturbed, and was the target of bullying, both at school and online via cyber-bullying, in the time leading up to her apparent suicide. Her Facebook page was rife with posts in which she demeaned herself and, in a post written on February 11, even mentioned that she was thinking of taking her own life.
“I’m actually just going to wait for someone to make a petition for me to kill myself because it’s inevitable,,, like, we all see it coming,” Jackson wrote. Another post from January said “The thing is, I don’t want to get better,” she wrote. “I’m fearful that these meds will kick in and i’ll no longer feel suicidal. I don’t want that to change, okay.”
Other posts had her lamenting not having a boyfriend for Valentine’s Day, and indications that other students thought she was overweight. “Being 5’6 and 115 pounds apparently makes me fat, according to mean people on the internet,” wrote Jackson some time before the suicide.
Jackson was a student at NEST+m, a K-12 school for gifted and talented youths in Manhattan’s Lower East Side. Footage from a security camera at Jackson’s grandmother’s building shows the teenager going to her apartment to spend time with her grandmother, then going straight up to the roof and sitting alone for two hours. She then went back down to the apartment for about half an hour, then went back up to the roof and jumped at about 10:40 PM, falling 27 stories to her untimely demise.
The local community has inundated Jackson’s family with condolences, several of which have appeared on social media. A friend of hers posted on Jackson’s Facebook page “Rest in peace. To all the kids that disrespected you they only wanted what you had. Prayers to your family.” Posts from friends in the days leading up to her suicide were also encouraging, with friends extending their hand for help if she needed it. There was, however, also apparently some kind of petition that, according to a post on Jackson’s Facebook page, called for her to get “prettier, smarter, or dead.”
Jackson apparently gained access to the roof via an unlocked door. The doorman for the apartment building let her in because, although she didn’t live there, she would visit her grandmother very often. She was described as a “sweet” girl. Her family has not made any statements to the press as yet.
To contact the author, email to deepakchitnis@americanbazaaronline.com