Police say a fifth-grader who jumped to his death from a second-story window at a New Jersey school had threatened to do it before on at least four occasions, and did so fatally after a chess match last month.
A final investigative report police released Wednesday says a classmate at Grant Elementary School in Dumont never told anyone about the previous threats because he thought the 10-year-old boy was kidding, according to The Record newspaper.
On the day of his fatal leap, police say a lunch aide said the boy was upset because his winning opponent never said "checkmate." The boy asked the opponent, "Do you want me to do something drastic?" and handed him a note, according to the police report.
The lunch aide confiscated the note and turned to see the boy leap from the window, reports The Record. He had apparently hoisted himself onto a shelf and crawled along the top of it to the window, which was open, the paper says.
The child went through the window "headfirst, unforced, unassisted and of his own accord," police told The Record. The report said he had "serious facial injuries." It did not elaborate on the content of the confiscated note the boy had handed his opponent before he jumped.
According to the police report, the boy had threatened to jump out a window at least four times after becoming angry, including once after losing a chess match in December. The week he jumped, he told the lunch aide no one was letting him play chess with them, and the lunch aide told the other students to include him in their games, the report said, according to The Record.
The school provided counseling in the immediate aftermath of the boy's suicide, but it wasn't clear if any long-term policy changes had been implemented following his death. An attorney for the school declined to comment to The Record about any changes Wednesday, and both the attorney and school officials declined comment to the newspaper on the police report.
