A 12-year-old Florida girl committed suicide on Sept. 9 after enduring relentless bullying for at least a year, The Los Angeles Times reported.
Rebecca Ann Sedwick of Lakeland, Fl. was discovered by police the next day at an abandoned cement plant after school officials noticed she didn't show up for class.
"We can see from what we've investigated so far that Rebecca wasn't attacking back," said Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd on Thursday. "She appeared to be beat down. She appeared to have a defeatist attitude. And quite frankly, the entire investigation is exceptionally disturbing to the entire investigative team."
The bullying reportedly began over a boy last year, according to Judd. Sedwick's friends turned against her, one of which she got in a fight with and led to her temporary suspension from school.
Sedwick's friends said she felt "terrorized." She eventually transferred to another school after a period of homeschooling.
"There were a lot of interventions that occurred," Judd added. "There were multiple interventions by the school, by the hospital, by counselors, by parents, by the sheriff's office. There were interventions that were attempted, but it just didn't work."
Sedwick's mother, Tricia Norman, said although she deleted her daughter's Facebook account, she discovered other social media applications on her phone that shed light on the consistent bullying she battled. Among the inbox messages Norman found were "Why are you still alive?" and "Go kill yourself."
Investigators found disturbing keywords and phrases that Sedwick typed into search engines before her death, including "how to get blades out of razors" and "how many Advil do you need to take to die?" Another question they discovered was "What is overweight for a 13-year-old girl?"
"At the end of the day, it wasn't a physical schoolyard fight that was the demise of this child. It was the bullying online," Judd said. The sheriff also mentioned the teenagers involved in the cyberbulling are being investigated.
"Our detectives have identified several juveniles of interest, at least 15 who ran in Rebecca's Internet circle, or social media circle, and we're in the process of talking to all of them," he said.
