Greenfield Indiana parents’ lawsuit says boy, 10, was bullied to point of suicide.
Parents say school bullying in Greenfield led to 10-year-old son’s suicide in new lawsuit
This story contains mention of suicide. If you are in crisis or seeking emotional support, the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline can be reached by dialing 988.
On a sunny Saturday in May, 10-year-old Sammy Teusch gestured to another kid while leaving his brother’s soccer game.
“That’s him,” he told his family.
Sammy, his father recalls, was referring to a boy on the field who he said was among a group at his Greenfield elementary school who had been bullying him for months. This particular child, Sammy said, had stuffed him into a trash can the week before.
The family was already aware of the bullying and by that point had made numerous complaints to the district.
But the next morning, one of Sammy’s siblings found him dead in his room. Sammy died by suicide, the coroner’s office said, ruling his death via asphyxiation.
His family says that two years of bullying and taunting, which included telling Sammy to kill himself, led to the tragedy.
The bullying is detailed in a wrongful death lawsuit filed Tuesday in Hancock County Circuit Court by the boy’s family, who allege the Greenfield-Central Community School Corporation and its Board of Trustees showed “callous indifference” in addressing the bullying. The lawsuit also specifically names the district’s superintendent, Harold Olin.
“This suit is about more than holding the Greenfield School Corporation accountable, it’s about making sure no child ever experiences what Sammy experienced – and no family again experiences the heartbreak the Teusch family can now never escape,” said Brian Grossman, the attorney representing the family.
The bullying started about two months after the family moved from Florida in 2022 to Greenfield, a town of roughly 26,000 people east of Indianapolis. Sammy came home from his first school, Weston Elementary, and said his peers started calling him Jeffrey Dahmer, the Wisconsin serial killer behind the killings of 17 men and boys from the late 1970s to early 1990s.
“That was our first trip to the school here in Greenfield about Sammy,” his dad said. It was not the last. The family enrolled him in Greenfield Intermediate School, but Sammy’s bullying only “ramped up.”
In one instance on the school bus, the family says Sammy was hit in the face with an iPad, breaking his glasses and leaving him with a black eye that would remain through Christmas.
Sam Teusch estimates he reported bullying more than 20 times to school officials, who he said either denied the accusations, promised to follow up or even portrayed Sammy as the aggressor – a claim the father vehemently denies.
“The kids that were picking on Sammy and abusing him on a daily basis were about two to four years older and twice the size,” Sam Teusch said.
And, his father said, Sammy displayed no discipline or emotional problems in his previous schools in Florida and Wisconsin.
Despite the bullying not subsiding, Sammy stopped telling his dad about the abuse, Sam Teusch said.
The Greenfield Police Department in the weeks after Sammy’s death announced they had investigated the circumstances surrounding the suicide and acknowledged the bullying in his life. They opted to not pursue criminal charges in the case.
“Any time there is a tragic event, we, as a society, want to place blame on someone or something to help take away the pain we are experiencing and get some understanding,” a statement from Deputy Chief Charles McMichael said. “There is enough blame that we all probably own some of this.”
In the lawsuit, the boy’s family wants a jury trial. Yet Sam Teusch said awareness about suicide rates among children matters more to him.
“At the end of all this, no matter the outcome of any of this, we’ve lost,” he said. “I want to make a point to society and everyone.”
