Background: Kelaia Turner in the hospital after her 2023 suicide attempt (Ty Turner/Facebook). Inset: Kelaia Turner (Ty Turner/Facebook).
After a young girl from South Carolina suffered permanent injuries following a suicide attempt linked to severe bullying, her family has taken legal action against the school district for negligence. The incident took place at Dr. Phinnize J. Fisher Middle School in Greenville County.
The lawsuit, filed in November 2021, reveals that Kelaia Turner, who was 11 years old at the time, reported being bullied by classmates. Shockingly, the bullying continued for a year and a half, with allegations that some teachers at the school were complicit in allowing it to persist.
Accusing the school and nine staff members of negligence, gross negligence, recklessness, and misconduct, the lawsuit holds them accountable for the events that led to Kelaia Turner’s suicide attempt in March 2023.
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.”
More from Law & Crime: Mother ‘dumbfounded’ over plea deals for juveniles accused of fatally attacking her son in high school mob brawl
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 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.
