A schoolboy hanged himself in his bedroom when he feared he would get a ‘red’ mark against his name for forgetting to bring his satchel to school.
12-Year-Old Tyrese Glasgow, returned to his home in Mossley, Greater Manchester, after realising on the school run that he did not have his textbooks with him.
But when he got back home, Tyrese – who ‘hated getting into trouble – discovered he had misplaced his door key and was unable to get into the property.
When the boy eventually got into the house, he ran upstairs into his bedroom.
When he did not turn up for lessons, the school called his mother, who found her son hanging from his bedroom door.
Before his death, Tyrese was awarded ‘star of the term’ award at the 1,300 pupil Saddleworth School in Oldham. He had also been given high ‘green’ grades under a scheme for good behaviour.
However, at an inquest into his death, his mother Katy Cross, said the youngster feared he would be given a ‘red’ mark for arriving at school without his bag.
Cross told the Stockport hearing: “I told him to go and get it and come back straight away and go back to school.It would have taken him ten to 14 minutes and, if he had done exactly that, he would have been on time.He just didn’t want to go without his bag because he would have been graded “red” for forgetting his books.”
She added that she thought her son had a door key, but that the school later contacted her at work to say Tyrese never showed up.
“I started ringing him and messaging him and I thought he was just ignoring me because he had been caught out,” she said.
“I spoke to my partner Brian and asked him to go home to check on Tyrese. When I got home, I shouted him and there was no answer. I shouted him again and started walking up and that’s when I darted into his room.'”
Cross and her partner tried to revive Tyrese but he was pronounced dead in Tameside Hospital where a post mortem examination confirmed he died from asphyxiation.
The missing front door key was later discovered under the handbrake of her car.
At the hearing, Miss Cross described her son as emotional and nervous, adding that he had undergone counselling after his parents split which deeply affected him.
“He would get emotional when he was really annoyed with himself or when he was in trouble. He would get upset and angry, like clenching fists. I would sit with him and calm him down he would just get his breath back and be apologising and then the tears would come and he would calm down.He appeared to be struggling to contain his emotions. He would look angry at first and then he would be in tears and saying how sorry he was. It would take him about 20 minutes to calm down.”