Father demanding Anthony School District take action following son’s suicide

A heartbroken father is demanding the Anthony School District do more after his 12-year-old son recently committed suicide.

Leonel Ortega lost his son, Javier Ortega, back on April 19th after Javier hanged himself from a tree in the family’s backyard.

Javier Ortega was a 7th grader at Anthony Middle School and his father says he was being bullied at school.

On Wednesday, Leonel Ortega spoke before the Anthony School Board calling on them to take action to prevent another student from taking his or her own life.

Ortega talked about returning home and finding his son hanging from the tree.

“I took him off the tree and I started CPR immediately until the paramedics took over,” Ortega said. “A few minutes later, my son was declared dead.”

Ortega says his son also expressed suicidal thoughts to his friends, but that his friends, who are just children, didn’t tell anyone.

“So if the kids would have been prepared. If his friends would have been prepared they could have forwarded the information to a proper person who could have effectively helped my son, but that didn’t happen,” Ortega said.

AISD says it didn’t know of any bullying incidents against Ortega and that his family never came forward to anyone at the school.

The district’s Assistant Superintendent, Oscar Troncoso, told ABC-7 in a statement, “If there had been any kind of complaint in regards to bullying and Javier, our staff and teachers were prepared to immediately and appropriately respond. While our hearts have been broken, we’ve managed to rally around our students because we want to do everything humanly possible to prevent another tragedy.”

It is a state law in Texas that every school district be required to take part in suicide prevention training.

For more information on that and the signs to look for, click on the link below for some useful information about mental health education.

https://www.esc19.net/Page/773