Warning: This article contains sensitive mentions of violence as a result of gender identity that some readers may find upsetting. Please proceed with caution.
At first, it seemed like everything was going to be okay. In early Feb. 2024, a fight broke out between high school students in a bathroom at Owasso High School in Owasso, Oklahoma. Nex Benedict, a 16-year-old nonbinary teenager, was one of those students.
The fight was stopped, and no one seemed seriously hurt. The school nurse did, however, recommend that Benedict, who used they/them pronouns, get looked at by a doctor despite Benedict being alert and able to walk around. Doctors found nothing wrong, but the next day, Benedict was rushed back to the hospital, and a short time later, they were dead.
What happened to Nex Benedict?
On the day of the fight, when Benedict and their mother were in the hospital getting checked out, Benedict’s mother, Sue Benedict, called the police after getting upset that the school had determined law enforcement didn’t need to get involved. In body cam footage from the hospital, Benedict explains that they were taunted for the “way they dress” by a group of girls in the bathroom.
According to Benedict, the confrontation escalated, with Benedict splashing water on the students before they were knocked to the ground and beaten. School administrators said the fight lasted less than two minutes, but at one point, Benedict told the police they blacked out. The next day, Sue called an ambulance to her home, reporting that Nex was breathing shallowly and that their eyes had rolled back in their head.
Sue reportedly said that she hoped it wasn’t caused by the head injury from the day before and added that the hospital was supposed to have checked Nex “out good.” EMTs then transported Benedict to the hospital, where the teenager was pronounced dead.
Nex Benedict experienced bullying
Before the February incident at Owasso High School, Benedict had reported bullying and harassment from other students at the school as a result of their gender identity. Benedict’s death, meanwhile, came amid contentious public debate over transgender rights in Oklahoma and elsewhere in the U.S. and drew outcry from LGBTQ+ rights groups worldwide. In a statement from their lawyer, Benedict’s family said,
“The Benedict family calls on all school, local, state, and national officials to join forces to determine why this happened, to hold those responsible to account, and to ensure it never happens again.”
via The New York Times
As of this report, Benedict’s exact cause of death is still under investigation. Early autopsy results did not conclude that Benedict died from trauma, The New York Times reported. Complete autopsy and toxicology results are still pending.