A video posted online showing a group assault of a 14-year-old Central Regional High School student in Berkeley Township, New Jersey, was followed by the girl committing suicide. Her family are angry with the girls who beat Adriana Kuch, 14, earlier this month. They are also upset with school officials whom they believe did not do enough for the troubled teen.
Adriana Kuch was assaulted February 1 by a group of students in a school hallway, according to a NewsNation report. Her fellow students dragged her down a hallway, hit her with a 20-ounce water bottle and punched her and kicked her, according to the report. She killed herself two days later after a video of the incident was published online.
Kuch was found dead in her Bayville home February 3. Superintendent of Schools Triantafillos Parlapanides said the four students in the assault have been suspended, according to an NBC News report.
The NBC report noted the four youths have been charged in connection with the teen’s death.
One was charged with aggravated assault, another with harassment and two others with conspiracy to commit aggravated assault, Ocean County Prosecutor Bradley D. Billhimer said in a statement Friday.
“Each juvenile and their guardian was served with a copy of their complaint and are released pending future court appearances,” Billhimer said.
Initially, though, family said the incident was not treated as seriously by school officials as it should have been.
“They dragged their feet,” her brother Jacob said about school administrators. “They only punished one of the girls on day one. Only one girl was suspended. The other three girls just got to go back to class.”
“The initial girl who got suspended, her phone was not taken away,” he added. “It’s devastating how they were allowed to continue on.”
The alleged assailants were treated more severely when all four were criminally charged Friday.
Jacob Kuch also called for Superintendent Parlapanides to resign for comments he initially made about the Kuch family, according to a report in the New York Post.
“Her father was having an affair at the end of her 6th grade. Her father married the woman he had an affair with and moved her into the house,” Parlapanides said in an email to the Daily Mail.
“Her grades and choices declined in 7th and 8th grade,” he continued. “We offered her drug rehab and mental services on five occasions but the father refused every time.”
“We tried helping her several times but mother’s suicide was a major reason she started making poor choices,” the superintendent concluded.
Michael Kuch, the 14-year-old’s father, denied the school offered drug counseling to his daughter, whom he noted had merely experimented with a weed vape, much like other teens her age.
Kuch reportedly viewed the superintendent’s statements as blaming his daughter, according to the Post report.
“My daughter was attacked in your school and you did nothing,” the father yelled at the superintendent. “And now you want to blame this on everyone else except yourself because you failed and you suck at your job.”
The grief-stricken father remarked that Parlapanides should resign and consider a new career as a Walmart greeter. Kuch insisted his daughter’s death was not related in any way to her biological mother’s tragic death.
“Adrianna’s mother’s passing seven years ago has nothing to do with why she has passed now,” Kuch said. “One thing has nothing to do with the other.”
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