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.

In my last year of primary my teacher had a still born baby. I always remember her telling us and I felt really sad for her even though I was too young to fully understand how awful it was. She had a large bump so was either term or very close to term. I think she was back at work quite quickly. Poor lady 😢

@Itsbackagain I’m really sorry you were closely affected by the horrific murders at Dunblane, I doubt anyone who wasn’t there / connected can even imagine what those children, families and teachers went through.

It might not have been clear from my OP but I’ve spent most of today (and many times in the last 30 years) thinking of the horrible thing that happened when I was at school yet I don’t know anyone else that went through something similar.

Yes. A murder at secondary school of someone I'd known since primary. I don't really want to write about the circumstances as it would be recognisable and feels disrespectful. Absolutely fucking awful. The press do ' x years ago today' articles and her face suddenly looking at me out of a magazine / my phone is like a punch in the gut. God knows how her poor family deal with it.

Also deaths caused by being hit by a car, and driver/passenger deaths in older lads who had newly passed their test. All so needless and sad.

(why do we say needless, that's an odd phrase, isn't it. We never say it was sad but necessary, do we? Even war would never be described like that, I don't think.)

A male friend died in a car crash (I think the driver fell asleep), another friend died suddenly and a third shot himself and took his life. There were other tragic events.

I do wonder how similar events would be dealt with today ie the difference in terms of mental health care? I recall talking about all of the above with friends but we weren't really given time to grieve and there was no organised after care as it were.

@TheVanguardSix I’m really sorry that happened to your friends.

Whilst it is a bit morbid the worst thing happening ime is being forgotten. The fact that you carry their stories means they live in memory, the pain of memory is less than the pain of being forgotten.

I was at school with a girl who had twins at 12. She didn't know she was pregnant, or in denial, until the late stages. I remember the biology teacher giving the 'facts of life' lecture and us all staring at her like it was a bit late to learn about contraception. Social services took the babies away, and I assume there were some significant safeguarding issues. She came back to school briefly, and then disappeared from education. She went on to have more and more babies every year, and was allowed to keep some of these children in her care. By 18, she had given birth to 4 or 5 children, and was the talk of the community. I saw her in the city centre with the brood when I was heading out clubbing, and I felt very sorry for her being tied down to a family in her youth.

At secondary school our very well liked deputy head went home sick on the Friday afternoon. Was dead from meningitis by Saturday afternoon. His daughter's attended our school too. Awful for them.

Not at my school but a friend of a friend was killed in a car accident as she wasn't wearing her seatbelt and broke her neck.

No murders or anyhing they were rare here until the last few years. Not long before I started secondary school a girl in my year had a cousin with cystic fibrosis. There was a TV documentary about her she desperately needed a heart and lung transplant. Didn't stop her going to school though they showed in the doc her getting around school with her friends with her equipment including a big oxygen cylinder. Sadly she never got her transplant and passed away not long before we started year 7. Her ashes were scattered in a garden of remembrance at the front of what was tower block. There was a photo album of her time at school in the reception of tower block. A few years ago our old school was knocked down to merge with two others to become an academy. There was house's built on the site but the garden of remembrance is still there. The photo album was given to her family.😭😭😭

A good friend in primary school (year 6) died suddenly. It was just before Christmas too. I still think of her and her family, she was the loveliest girl and the way she died was extremely unfortunate.

Yes, a close friend died at 16, along with family members, due to a household accident. It was awful, I still remember her mum at the funeral, she was so strong. My dd was born on the anniversary of her death.

Not as horrific as some of these stories, but a boy in my form suffered very bad (disfiguring) burns from a Bunsen burner, which caught his tracksuit top (80s polyester, we didn’t have uniform) and Afro hair.,

Yes, my schools days seemed packed with tragic stories - big school communities, so perhaps statistically more likely i than in smaller towns, but also memorable so of course they stand out from all the happier school memories.

at primary, we had a child die in an accident and another murdered by a family member. Various others lost their family members tragically young to cancer and I can still remember the shock and horror of it all.

Secondary school we had some drug and glue sniffing tragedies, teen pregnancies etc.

Yes!
Our headmaster had a heart attack in front of a full school assembly on the first day of school and (same school, different year) somebody from the year above accidentally hung himself on his bunk bed and died!
In my next school (I had middle and high school) we had one girl threaten to kill herself because the PE teacher didn't love her, she slit her wrists in the toilets.
And that same school, the RE teacher was fired because he got caught buying alcohol for people in my year (we were 14ish).
There is more, I could write a novel on my school years!

@DrSophia i don’t remember there being any counselling or mental health support at our school, especially for the year 3s. It was quite late in the school year so maybe nothing could be arranged in time but I hope schools would offer more support now.

@Ducksurprise i don’t think that’s morbid at all and is a lovely way of thinking about it.

@TattiePants it sounds like we were at the same school, if not, by horrific coincidence, we had the same situation at my school.
My DS is now the age I was when it happened and I was recently talking about it as it was in the news again. It was awful at the time, but now as a parent, it's just beyond comprehension what the families have had to live through over and over again.

A girl in my pe class was running backwards fell hit her head went to stand and passed out she was in intensive care and they switched her machine off. There was a man who also came into the local senior school in the 80s and stabbed aload of kids one of the girls died. At uni my ex boyfriend fell into the river drunk and was found 11 days later

Was that Bunmi Shagia? I remember that happening poor girl. One person shouldn't have been supervising all those kids.😭😭😭

My form teacher commited suicide by jumping in the Thames during the school holidays. His wife had left him but looking back I wonder if he was about to get charged with something paedophile related as all the girls knew he was dodgy, going under our tables to look up our skirts for example.

My friend's dad was murdered on a night out, it was awful, I was with her the day after at an event and she was taken away and told by family. A boy in my class was arrested as an accessory. He disappeared for over a year then came back as if nothing had happened!

Another friend died from leukemia, quite suddenly, well in the space of around 6 months they were fine, diagnosed then died. They were last year of high school.

Someone had jumped from the bell tower but that was quite a few years before I was there so it didn't affect me but the other two did.

We had a fellow student die of Leukaemia, a poor year 7 had a heart attack on the field playing a football match and didn’t make it and a student lost relatives in a awful car crash.

A girl a few years younger ran across the busy road to get to school but sadly got hit and died, they then put traffic lights and pedestrian crossings at the junction, and still nearly 40 years later I think of her when I drive through the village/get to the junction.

A girl in my year got pregnant and gave birth at 14, her parents made her give the baby up for adoption and then she pretty much popped out a baby every year for the next few years, I think she ended up with 5 kids (6 including the one she was forced to give up) in her early twenties but she seemed happy and all she ever wanted was to be a mum.

@DrSophia They do now I know when a 13 year old died where I live a few years ago they closed the school. Also had councillor available for a few days when the kids returned. Wasn't a brutal murder or anything. His dad gave him an illegally obtained adult dose morphine tablet for a headache.

@BackToWhereItAllBegan Hopefully it is the same school as it would be awful to think the same thing happened somewhere else (MWM?). At the time it was obviously very upsetting for us but it’s not until you look back as an adult and think about what the families went through.