Nicholas Kelo Jr. may have taken his life due to Anti-Gay Bullying

Nicholas Kelo Jr. shot himself because he was bullied daily for being in the band at his high school. Here's the story:

Each night when Nick's mother, Jacqueline, left the University of Akron, where she worked in the political science department, she would call her son and chat on her way home. When she came through the door, he routinely welcomed her with a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and carrots. But something was terribly wrong Feb. 23.


''I called at 6:30 and there was no answer,'' said the grieving mother, her voice fading. ''And I kept calling. There was no answer.''


When she arrived home, she found Nick near death from a gunshot wound, lying on the living room floor.


''Deep down in our hearts, this was not a child who would have planned to take his life,'' said the boy's father, Nicholas Sr. ''He may have been bullied to the point that he felt like he needed to protect himself.''


Sitting in the dining room of her Rittman home recently, Jacqueline Kelo dropped her head into the palms of her hands. Deep cleansing breaths escaped her. Her only child was dead. The pain was deep.


Across the table, her ex-husband struggled to keep his tears at bay.


''It had been going on for years,'' Jacqueline Kelo said. ''We would talk and he would say [of the bullies] that they were not worth his time.''


Nick played football in middle school but gave up the sport this year to participate in high school band. The switch, Jacqueline Kelo reasoned, resulted in swelling rumors. Some, she said, wrongly assumed that a kid who would prefer to play the tenor sax rather than tossing a pigskin must be gay.

''After that, it [the bullying] spiraled out of control,'' she said.

One such incident allegedly happened on a school bus following a football game, explained the mother of another Rittman teenager who said her son is also a victim of bullying. During the incident, Nick allegedly became the victim of an older student who was ''glicking'' — forcibly spitting on him. Jacqueline Kelo knew something was bothering her son when he came home, but the eighth-grader refused to share the details — telling her that he would handle it himself. The parents became aware of it only after their son's death.

The school has own up to the issue and will increase staff in the anti-bullying program. I hope this is not a start for more lost lives.

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