Christmas

Sadie's Story: Teen's Parents Shine Light on Suicide, Dark Side of Internet

For David and Norma Walker, of Garland, Christmas 2014 started early in the morning just like it does for so many other families.

Their four children raced to open their gifts.

The stockings were stuffed, and their children smiled as they sat on the floor near the Christmas tree unwrapping packages.

"It was a perfect morning," David Walker remembers.

Sadie Walker, their oldest child, was 15 years old. She got everything she wanted, including a new skateboard she immediately asked to ride.

Her father gave her permission to go outside.

When she didn't come back right away, her parents became worried.

They couldn't find her anywhere.

Their concerns grew when she didn't answer her cell phone.

With each passing minute, they grew increasingly frantic.

"That's when things went downhill," David Walker said.

The parents called 911, and police traced Sadie's cell phone to an isolated spot near the family's home.

She had killed herself. Her cause of death was suicide by asphyxiation.

"It's shocking," her father said. "That's the word. It's shocking!"

The Walkers say Sadie had shown no signs of depression and never gave the smallest hint that she was suicidal.

Sadie played on the golf team at Richardson High School, was a good student and had said she wanted to be a doctor when she grew up.

Her golf coach, Lyndal Weaver, couldn't believe it when he learned what Sadie had done.

"It came like a bomb that exploded," Weaver said. "It caught us all by surprise."

Struggling for answers, her parents searched her cell phone and learned she had been on the phone with a boy classmate at the time she died.

"He was on the phone with her for 37 minutes," her father said. "That call culminated with Sadie dying. And he listened to her die."

But the phone call raised more questions than it answered, and Sadie's parents say the boy and his parents have never given them any details.

They soon learned another startling fact. Sadie had secretly set up an account on the social media platform Instagram just a few weeks earlier, and began talking to other young people about depression and suicide.

While the family prepared for Sadie's funeral, Weaver, her golf coach, helped search through her Instagram messages.

"Most of it was about self-harm and things about dying," he said.

Sadie's parents couldn't believe what they read.

"It's just a group of kids — depressed kids — talking to other depressed kids, about depression, all day long," David Walker said. "And I think she just got dragged into it."

"It was very deep and dark and it was troubling," Weaver added.

They discovered that perhaps a handful of Sadie's classmates were also involved in the online chats, including the boy who was on the phone with her when she killed herself.

"Kids knew what was happening and not once did they go to a counselor, a teacher, an adult," Norma Walker said. "Some of them knew my phone number. I was a phone call away, a text away."

It's unclear why none of Sadie's friends ever warned an adult, but her parents said some of them were also depressed and appeared on the verge of taking their own lives.

So amid their grief, the parents and the coach urgently tried tracking down the other teens, some of whom used screen names and could not immediately be identified.

Instagram, they say, was no help.

Coach Weaver said after Sadie's death he tried to get the conversations removed.

"I flagged it many, many days in a row," Weaver said. "I don't know what it takes."

Sadie's parents wanted records of her online chats to help piece together the puzzle.

"The message was, unfortunately, if a child is 13 years or older, they're protected by Internet privacy laws," David Walker said.

Instagram's policy, posted online, says the minimum age to open an account is 13 but adds, "Instagram doesn't ask users to specify their age."

As far as parents' rights, Instagram says: "Unfortunately we can't give you access to the account or take any action on the account at your request. We're generally forbidden by privacy laws."

"Unfortunately we're not able to comment on individual accounts," an Instagram spokesman said in an emailed statement. "We do investigate any content that's reported to us, and the promotion of self-harm is prohibited."

The Walkers reached out to the other parents.

Some of the classmates were admitted to a hospital for treatment and seem to be better now, they said.

Now, the Walkers want their grief and frustration to turn into something good.

They want social media sites to better monitor and close chat rooms that they say encourage suicide.

And they want to share Sadie's story with young people to encourage them not to be afraid to talk to adults.

Sadie's parents have set up a website to tell her story and, they hope, save lives and prevent other parents from experiencing the same ordeal.

"We cry every day," Norma Walker said. "We miss her. We love her. She was our love. We adored her."

If you or someone you know is in crisis, call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK (8255), which is toll-free and available 24/7. Also, visit the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline website: www.suicidepreventionlifeline.org.

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