A 16-year-old student in a small Oklahoma town outside Tulsa has died after what police said was a “physical altercation” in a high school bathroom, sparking outrage from gay and transgender rights groups who said the student accepted assault because of their gender. ID card.
The student, Nex Benedict, who often used the pronouns they and them, told relatives that they did not think of themselves as strictly male or female. Under an Oklahoma law passed in 2022, students must use the bathrooms that align with their birth sex.
As of Wednesday afternoon, no arrests had been made in connection with the fight, which occurred Feb. 7 in a girls’ bathroom at Owasso High School. Police said the case is still under investigation.
The apparent seriousness of the altercation, and the student’s death a day later, has focused national attention on how school officials and law enforcement handled it.
The Owasso Police Department said in a statement Tuesday that no report was made of the incident until after the injured student was taken to a hospital by relatives later that day. At that point, a school resource officer went to the hospital, police said in their statement. The student was discharged and went home, but was rushed to the hospital by Owasso Fire Department medics the next day and died there, police said.
“It is not known at this time if the death is related to the incident at the school or not,” the statement said.
On Wednesday, police said in a new statement that preliminary information from the medical examiner, based on a full autopsy, “indicated that the deceased did not die as a result of blunt force trauma.” The statement did not indicate a cause of death, citing further tests pending, including toxicology.
No other students were deemed to need outside medical attention following the incident, the school said in a statement.
The school district issued a statement Tuesday, suggesting there had been “speculation and misinformation” about the circumstances surrounding the altercation, which lasted less than two minutes before being broken up by other students “along with a staff member who was supervising outside the the toilet.” The school said all the students involved “walked under their own power to the assistant principal’s office and the nurse’s office.”
The school district said the students’ parents and guardians had the option to file a police report after being notified of the fight, and added that any student found to be involved “will receive disciplinary consequences.”
The district did not say what discipline was imposed.
A school district spokesman, Jordan Korphage, said no further details could be released due to privacy laws, nor could the district provide information about any previous bullying reports against Nex.
“Nex didn’t see himself as male or female,” Sue Benedict, Nex’s grandmother, told The Independent. “Nex saw himself in the middle. I was still learning, Nex was teaching me that.”
At a modest home in Owasso, a man who identified himself as Nex’s father said the family remained in mourning and declined to comment on the school’s handling of the incident. “We are grieving parents,” he said.
An online death notice described Nex, using his birth name, as a young person who loved the outdoors, drawing and playing Ark and Minecraft video games.
Melanie Atwood, 51, a neighbor two doors down from the family, said she remembered Nex as a toddler who made Mrs. Atwood’s cookies and liked to drop by to visit her cats. “It’s just terrible,” said Mrs. Atwood.
Ms Benedict said that after the fight at school, she was told Nex had been suspended for two weeks. After returning home from the initial hospital visit, she said, Nex complained of a sore throat. The next day, Nex collapsed at home and was rushed to the hospital, he said.
Lawyers for the family issued a statement Wednesday saying Nex was “assaulted and assaulted in the bathroom by a group of other students” and added that the Benedicts were praying for “substantial change in which bullying is taken seriously and no family has to face with another tragedy that could have been avoided.”
The death has renewed scrutiny of anti-transgender laws passed in the state and rhetoric from Oklahoma officials, including state Superintendent of Education Ryan Walters, whose agency has sought to block what it calls “radical gender theory” in schools. .
“It’s dangerous,” Mr. Walters said in a video the agency made last year. “It puts our girls at risk.”
The video highlighted a fight in a bathroom last year in which, according to the lawsuit, a female student was “severely” injured in an altercation with a transgender student.
Advocates for non-binary and transgender students said the state’s gender and bathroom policy had led to more reports of confrontations in schools.
“This policy and the messaging around it has led to a lot more policing of bathrooms by students,” said Nicole McAfee, executive director of Freedom Oklahoma, which advocates for transgender and gay rights. Students who don’t present as obviously male or female are challenged by other students, they said. “There’s a sense of ‘do you belong here?'”
In addition to the bathroom law, Oklahoma last year passed a ban on gender transition care for minors. And in 2022, the state was among the first in the country to expressly prohibit residents from using gender-neutral markers on their birth certificates.
Last month, the state education agency sparked outrage from transgender rights groups after naming Chaya Raichik, who runs Libs of TikTok, an X account that has posted anti-gay and anti-trans content, to serve on the Library Advisory Committee of the organization. , which examines the suitability of school library content.
In 2022, Ms. Raichik reposted a video of a teacher in the Owasso school district expressing her support for gay and transgender students. The teacher was later fired.
“Chaya is on the front lines, showing the world exactly what the radical left is all about — lowering standards, porn in schools and pushing indoctrination awakening to our children,” Mr. Walters told The Oklahoman last month.
Mr. Korphage, a spokesman for Owasso schools, said students who identify as transgender or non-binary will be treated “with dignity and respect, just like all students.”
He added: “Our goal is to include all students regardless of race, gender, religion or background.”
Outside Owassa High School on Wednesday, students said the school offered counseling to those who needed it, but that their classroom teachers didn’t pay attention to the national attention their classmate’s death brought.
“There’s a sense that something happened, but nobody’s talking about it,” said Chris Turner, 18, a senior. “A lot of people behave differently and get upset.”
