A 14-year-old girl was found dead inside a California high school about an hour after she was reported missing.
The school in the town of Olivehurst canceled classes for Thursday and Friday following the girl’s death, which appears to be a case of suicide, police said.
The teenager was a student of Lindhurst High School and was found hanging on the school’s second floor Thursday morning, reported New York Post.
“Dispatch received a call at 6:54 a.m. from a staff member at Lindhurst High School saying they could see a person hanging from the second story of a school building,” the Yuba County Sheriff’s Department said.
“It does appear to be a suicide. It’s an active, ongoing investigation,” Sheriff Wendell Anderson noted.
The girl had run away from home about an hour before her body was found. Deputies were alerted about it around 5.40 a.m. They went to the school after receiving a report about a girl found hanging on the school premises and identified her as the teenager who ran away from home.
“This is still an active investigation with detectives reviewing school surveillance and speaking with those close to the deceased. Additional details may be released as they become available,” the sheriff’s office said.
Classes at the school were canceled for the rest of the week but several resources, grief counselors and psychologists would be available on campus, ABC10 reported.
Officers are trying to contact the students who saw the girl’s body to obtain their statements and also to offer them wellness support.
“I know I can speak for our entire Department when I say we are incredibly heartbroken from this tragedy,” Anderson added. “This will undoubtedly impact our community and I urge anyone suffering with suicidal thoughts to seek help immediately.”
Fal Asrani, superintendent of the Marysville Joint Unified School District, also released a statement addressing the “traumatic” incident.
“Today is traumatic for the whole community of Lindhurst and the entire Yuba County,” Asrani said. “The trauma we are facing here today or the families, our students, our staff is not just at Lindhurst, it’s also at the schools in Johnson Park Elementary and at Yuba Gardens Middle School where the child attended, so a bigger community is facing the pain and the grief today.”
If you have thoughts of suicide, confidential help is available for free at the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline. Call 1-800-273-8255. The line is available 24 hours, every day.
