Did anything really tragic happen at your school?

[TattiePants]

I’ve spent today thinking about a murder that happened when I was at school over 30 years ago. I think it’s on my mind partly because it happened when I was sitting my GCSEs and DS is doing his now but also it’s been in the local news that another loosely connected child murder may finally be solved.

A boy from year 3 went missing and he was found murdered in a nearby derelict house. In the year prior to that, two other children had been killed in tragic circumstances so it was a really horrible time for the school community. Things got worse when a year 5 boy was arrested for the murder and spent months in custody, missing all his GCSEs. Many of us then had to give witness statements as we knew the arrested boy well. It took over 20 years for the actual murderer to be convicted and unfortunately he’d gone on to murder more boys from my school by then.

In all the years my DCs and friend’s DCs have been at school, they’ve (thankfully) never had anything like this. There’s been fights, teenage pregnancies, minor drug offences etc but nothing on this scale. Did anyone else have something really tragic happen when they were at school.

Feel really sad reading of these poor souls and what their families must have gone through and are going through.

A lad I went to school with died in a house fire age in the mid 90s as a teen after somehow overloading the plug socket in his bedroom and it set alight. His mum was the loveliest lady and it was truly horrendous.

A girl in my class lost her elder brother to drowning. He had gone fishing with his friends and decided to try and go swimming..... I remember it being announced in assembly and we were all so shocked.

When I was at college five lads from our year all died in a car crash together.

I think posters are processing rather than revelling in the gore.

One boy (from a different school but in our crowd) got hit by a bus and died after spending a week in intensive care.

Another boy (again, different school but in our crowd) nicked a car and fucked it into a brick wall at 80mph which killed him instantly.

Another boy (again, different school, same crowd) was stabbed to death at a bus stop for calling another boy's mum a 'slag'.

One of my friend's brothers was shot and killed in gang-related drama.

In my first week of year 13 (college), a student in the year below died in class. She felt unwell, rested her head on the desk and quietly died.
The following week one of the teachers died at home, aged 43, of a heart attack.

I think it is worthwhile to reflect on these events that occurred during our childhoods.

Much of our take on trauma is to do with how it is handled by the adults around us.

I remember a boy in my class standing up to tell news after the holidays and cheerfully announcing that during the break he had been in a car accident, his mother had died, he was now blind and lived in an orphanage.

We were very little and the gravity of it went over our heads. Children were asking questions like “what colour was the car?” Then the teacher sent the boy on an errand and explained to us that the news was very sad and we needed to be extra kind to the boy. It made an impression on me because I remember going home and telling my mother but I don’t remember her reaction.

A few years later my friend came to school and told me that during the weekend her mum had killed herself. Again I told my mother when I got home and I remember her shushing me then later explaining I shouldn’t say things like that in front of younger children. I didn’t understand why and thought I was in trouble 🤔

Very confusing for children, very distressing for the families.

My own children have lost classmates to a playground accident, a suicide and a heart attack, but haven’t said much about it. One little girl went missing at 8 and I did comment to my son how sad it was and he was surprised saying, “I don’t think you would say that if you knew what she was like Mum, she is.a very sassy girl.” Poor little thing had such a difficult life but children don’t see that, they just see what’s in front of them.

When we were right at the end of year 11, a couple of the boys broke into the school overnight and did some small level vandalism...think they put bins on the roof and wrote on boards in classrooms etc.
Head said prom would be cancelled if no one came forward, so they did and they were barred from attending. One of them died over the school holidays that followed, just didn't wake up one morning.
I always though it was so sad that he never got to attend the prom with the rest of us and reckon the teachers who barred him probably felt very guilty once they heard the news, not that they ever could have known.

I grew up in a city where we typically walked everywhere as teens, so I was shocked one night driving with one of my now DH's school friends in the more rural area he grew up in, when they pointed out three different points on the short journey where old friends had died in the past few years in either car or motorcycle accidents.

All were men, at night and all had been drinking.

A boy in my class and the rest of his family died in the Stockport Air Disaster in June 1967. He was 7 years old.
When I was 10 years old a boy in my school year got off the school bus on his way home; walked across the road a few yards in front of the bus.The bus had set off and the driver couldn't stop in time do he was run over and killed.

Not a death but tragic, I think... one of my friends was in a car accident while I was in primary school. In a coma for ages and wasn't expected to wake. I remember us making recordings on cassettes for his family to play for him in hospital. He was one of three of us that were good friends.

He eventually came out of the coma but had severe brain damage. He's sort of stuck where he was mentally. My dad and his dad are occasionally in touch for other reasons. It was about 35 years ago and he apparently still asks if me and the other guy can come round to play. Like he'd seen us at school earlier that day.

I live about two thousand kilometers away now. I feel so guilt for some reason whenever I think about him - that he's still waiting to see me and our other friend (who I haven't seen for about 15 years.)

Very randomly but a useful take away from this sad thread…
Always turn left when you leave a bus and cross the road behind it. DH pointed that out a couple of weeks ago. I’m 53 🤦🏻‍♀️😳

Not my school but DS1's. 2 boys in DS's year went to prison for a gang-related murder, it was a nationally reported case at the time. It was shocking, all the kids agreed that if you were to try to guess who in the year might be in a gang, these boys would never cross your mind. Very unsettling to realise that it really could be any child getting caught up with the wrong people. Sad all around but obviously the real tragedy and sympathy is for the victim and his family.

There were 2 fatal car crashes and 1 that out someone in a coma but she did come out relatively ok eventually when I was in 6th form.
It was a small school so we all know eachother well. I think it was so prevalent because most parents were wealthy so more kids had cars or drove their parents powerful ones

A girl year older than me from our school had meningitis that caused severe cognitive impairment on her. I didn't really know her that well, we knew each other from local dance classes that we attended together but we never actually talked. She was 14 I believe and she had to learn how to read and write again, etc. I don't know much about the case, just that her condition had been caused by the disease

Not me but my dad
(this was the 50’s,the school was all one school-you started at primary and finished secondary in the same building)
dad hates football-and for some reason was stuck watching a game with his classmates
for some reason he looked up and had his eye on one lad,who ran almost the full length of the pitch-and dropped down dead
turned out he’d had some heart condition and he was bloody lucky he’d made it to 15
seems the game just pushed him a bit too hard

When I was in year 11 a year 8 girl died from an asthma attack. Her sister was in my year.

I don't remember many people from school, don't keep in contact with them. However o remember one girl. In around year 9 or 10 she suddenly stopped coming to school. I wasn't close to her but she was in some of my classes. It was summer term and she was off from around June until October. I then was told that her dad had gone on a scuba diving day and went missing in the sea. His body wasn't found until a year or so later. I always think of her and how that must have felt losing her dad and not knowing where he was.

I completely agree. The thread police can't just shudder and move on, they have to post - and not just once. They look like ridiculous, finger-wagging rubber-neckers. I've spotted more than one of them on grotesque McCann threads for which they have no qualms spouting off, when it's nothing to do with them.

This thread is respectful, it's full of remembrances of loss of children and people who were in posters' lives when they were young and it's not for anybody to poke their noses in and judge them for that. These were peers and shocking losses, keep talking if that's what you want to do.

So sad reading about all the car accidents 😞

Sadly, most were probably due to lack of seat belts.
When I was a teen, in the mid 80s, most cars didn't have them in the back seats and it was social suicide to put one on in the front.

I really hope those times have changed?

Sadly yes, a girl died from mad cow disease :( I'll never forget that

Would an improvised car bomb under a teacher's car count as tragic?

I think I know this? Snatched from ‘the gill’?

I’m a lot older than you but I was a mum at the time and live very close. I still can’t walk or drive past without thinking of her 😞

This is a really sad thread. Such tragic loss.

I recall a boy at primary school (not in my class) fell off a bridge into a river and drowned, during one of the school holidays.

A teacher at sibling's primary school was diagnosed with leukemia and died within the same school year.

A girl at secondary school moved from slightly disruptive and 'pranking' type behaviour to suddenly behaving in a way which put her in danger - dancing across very busy main roads, for example. With the benefit of hindsight, she clearly developed a severe mental health problem. She left the school at 15 but goodness knows what happened to her after that.

I don't think there is anything wrong with this thread. As a child, when something awful happens to someone who is your age or who you know it can be an unbelievable shock. For a lot of kids, it's the first time they've ever had to experience loss or grief, or have come to realise that sadly bad things do happen to children. Of the incidents I talked about earlier, they all had a huge effect on me as a child because it made suicide and death of children uncomfortably real and I thought about these incidents for a long time. It's unsettling and may be the first time as a child you see that you aren't actually invincible. So I don't feel this thread is ghoulish, we are all affected in some way by these incidents even if we are not the family of the people involved.

A girl a few years older commit suicidal after boys took topless photos of her at a party she was drunk/ unconscious

Another girl died from cancer

Another 2 girls died in car crashes

May they all rest in peace

My primary school's headmaster's 16yr old son was killed with another boy in a terrible accident. They had sneaked out at night to an area where army did exercises, looking for used shells, and picked up an unexploded device and were both killed, it was terrible. I don't think the headmaster (who was a really fantastic teacher and lovely man) and his wife ever really recovered from the loss.

Seems to be a lot of pps complaining about this post, it's ghoulish, disrespectful etc. But they are clearly reading the replies!!
Some seem to think.these tragedies shouldn't be talked about. Do they mean they should be forgotten?
Should we not remember Dunblane?
Lockerbie? Manchester Arena?
All the servicemen/women killed in conflicts who are commemorated on war memorials and of course every 11:11?
Every sudden death is sad and tragic and should never be forgotten.