Bullying may have pushed 15-year-old to suicide - 13 WTHR Indianapolis

Richard Essex/Eyewitness News

Friends say bullying went too far after a 15-year-old high school freshman committed suicide.

The apparent target of bullies, high school freshman Billy Lucas had told friends and school administrators that he was happy in high school and was starting to settle in.

"Pretty outgoing young man," Greensburg High School Principal Phil Chappel said of Lucas.

But it was alleged bullying that, according to the Billy Lucas Memorial Facebook page, caused the outgoing freshman to take his own life.

"He was threatened to get beat up every day," friend and classmate Nick Hughes said. "Sometimes in classes, kids would act like they were going to punch him and stuff and push him."

Chappel said that no one had been punished for picking on Lucas, and that bullying had not even hit their radar.

"Sometimes he created that atmosphere around him," Chappel said. "Kind of like a little tornado because he went around doing things that made dust fly, I guess."

Friends of Lucas say that he had been tormented for years.

"Some people at school called him names," Hughes said, saying most of those names questioned Lucas' sexual orientation, and that Lucas, for the most part, did little to defend himself.

"He would try to but people would just try to break him down with words and stuff and just pick on him," Hughes said.

This is the first time that Greensburg High School administrators can remember a student taking their own life. But it's not going unnoticed - school administrators met Monday to discuss forming a committee that would include students and parents to help battle the bullying issues.