Last Sunday afternoon the girl’s mother, Levon Holton-Teamer, asked her daughter to clean her room. When it seemed she was taking a long time, the mom went looking for the teen and found the door to the bathroom locked and the lights in the bathroom off. Holton-Teamer then looked down and noticed a pool of blood. She eventually got into the bathroom and tried unsuccessfully to apply pressure to her daughter’s wounds but Tovonna Holton was dead.
The Pasco County Sheriff’s Office was informed that the high school freshman in Wesley Chapel, Florida had taken her own life. Holton had taken her mother’s gun out of her purse and shot herself. Just before she died, Holton kept telling her mother, “Mommy, I owe them, I owe them” The girl’s mother couldn’t understand what that meant or what was wrong.
Right after she died, Holton’s aunt, Angel Scott, went on Facebook to try and find what would have made her niece commit suicide. She found out a video was taken of Holton when she was naked in the shower. The 15-year-old did not consent to being filmed and did not know about it until the video appeared on Snapchat.
Although videos posted on Snapchat disappear either after they are viewed or within 24 hours, depending upon preferences, people are able to take screenshots that can last forever.
The family took to social media to tell what happened to Holton and to ask people with information to contact either the teen’s family or the Pasco County Sheriff’s Office. The hashtags #StopBullying and #ProtectOurChildren were used and by yesterday afternoon, more than 5,000 people had shared them.
In answer to the requests for information, the family was told since the video went up, a lot of people were talking about Holton and calling her names.
Holton’s family want justice and Scott said she wants the families of those responsible to feel what they are feeling, even though no matter what happens to their children they will still be able to visit them.
Dr. Walter Afield, a psychiatrist, told WFLA bullying on the Internet is so aggressive and comes so quickly it is difficult to tell parents signs to look for if their children are being bullied. As the time between the posting of the video and Holton’s death was about three hours, there was little her mother could do to even realize what the problem was let alone help her daughter.
The Pasco County Sheriff’s Office is investigating and charges may be laid.
