Two Florida girls, aged 12 and 14, were arrested following an investigation into the suicide of a 12-year-old girl who committed suicide after enduring bullying for over a year, Fox News reported.
A news conference for Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd is scheduled for Tuesday morning in Winter Haven, Fl. to discuss further details of the arrests. According to the sheriff's office, both girls were charged with felony aggravated stalking.
Rebecca Ann Sedwick of Lakeland, Fl. was discovered by police on Sept. 9 at an abandoned cement plant after school officials noticed she didn't show up for class.
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.
"We can see from what we've investigated so far that Rebecca wasn't attacking back," Judd said. "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."
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.
