Red Sucker Lake closes school while students, staff mourn death of boy, 16
CBC
WARNING: This story contains distressing details.
The youth had just turned 16, was a quiet and respectful student and had his whole life ahead of him.
Nick Harper, his grandfather, says the entire family is still in shock and they have no idea why the boy, who CBC is not naming per his parents' request, took his own life on the Red Sucker Lake First Nation school playground last week.
"I haven't slept," said Harper, who is also the community's education director.
"We're very puzzled. We were surprised that he did that to himself. I don't know if he had any problems. He had good friends."
The school at the fly-in community will remain closed much of this week as hundreds of students and staff continue to mourn the loss. It was a student who discovered Harper's grandson at the playground before school last Tuesday.
Harper doesn't expect the school will reopen until after the funeral.
On Sunday, elders and school staff gathered to pray at the site, where a cross has been erected, and in the school.
"The teachers are very impacted as well to the loss of the student," Chief Sam Knott said after the ceremonies.
Knott is most worried by the despair and hopelessness he sees in the youth, especially the boy's friends who are "overwhelmed and shocked."
"Copycat, that's what terrifies me. Other people [who are] thinking the same thing," Knott said.
"These students, young people are still taking it hard as we speak. This mental therapist, really it is a nurse type, she's been really reaching out to the kids that went to school that morning."
Red Sucker Lake, which is near the Manitoba-Ontario border, about 530 km northeast of Winnipeg, has been under a state of emergency since last Thursday.
The Four Arrows Health Authority Mobile Crisis Response Team was on the ground after the death was discovered Tuesday, but has since left.
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