On September 16, Jaylee Chillson – a 14-year-old girl from Kansas – ran away from home and attended a party with a 20-year-old male. Within hours, she had fatally shot herself in front of a sheriff’s deputy who was trying to convince her to return home to her family. Chillson was pronounced dead at the scene.
In a new interview with The Messenger, which was published on Saturday (September 23), Chillson’s father – Jeb Chillson – detailed some of the horrible ways her classmates had bullied her for several years. The bullying allegedly occurred both in-person and online, even after steps were taken to stop it.
According to Jeb, his daughter’s life began to take a turn for the worse in 7th grade – when she was a student at Clay Center Community Middle School. Students encouraged her to cut herself, sent mean messages to her on social media, and even dumped rubber cement in her hair while others watched.
“One girl was threatening to kill my daughter,” Jeb Chillson said of his daughter, Jaylee Chillson. He decided to contact school officials in an effort to end the bullying campaign, but he says nothing was done and the bullying continued. By the start of 8th grade, his daughter was growing more and more miserable.
That’s when Jeb and his wife, Stacie Chillson, pulled her out of the school and enrolled her in a different middle school in the area. Unfortunately, the bullying grew worse. “My daughter would come in covered in bruises and stuff like that,” Jeb said – adding that one boy went as far as sexually assaulting her.
“One of them grabbed her crotch in a sexual manner against her will. The same boy was bruising her up. He took her AirPods and stole money from her,” Jeb continued. In another effort to end the bullying, he spoke with the school’s principal and was assured that something would be done to address the bullying.
Again, nothing was done and the school ‘refused to do anything’ – leading Jeb to believe that the school had ‘completely failed’ his daughter. Jeb and Stacie then pulled her out of public school to homeschool her, but she continued to receive mean messages on Snapchat, Instagram, phone calls, and much more.
Jeb Chillson Performed CPR on His Daughter, Jaylee Chillson, After She Shot Herself
It was on September 16 when Jaylee Chillson decided to run away from home after telling her parents that she was taking their dog for a walk. It didn’t take long for her mother to learn that she had actually gone to a nearby party and was allegedly with a 20-year-old male – she learned of this on social media.
Jeb Chillson was in a car waiting for the sheriff’s deputy to escort his daughter out of the party when he heard a gunshot. He sprinted up to the house and immediately began performing CPR on Jaylee with the help of the stunned police officer and a firefighter. Their attempts to save her life were unsuccessful.
Her death is something no one saw coming – not even her therapist, whom she had been seeing for several years. “There was never any reason when this happened to even suspect this was going to happen,” Jeb Chillson explained – while adding that ‘bullying is just a terrible pandemic in this area.’
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Several days after the incident, which is still under investigation with no charges filed, a GoFundMe page was created by Jeb’s sister in honor of Jaylee Chillson. As of Monday (September 25), the page has received more than $24,000 (680+ donations) of its original $20,000 goal.
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