Law & Crime
An 11-year-old girl in Texas killed herself earlier this month after a prolonged period of bullying about her family’s immigration status, her mother says.
On Feb. 3, Jocelynn Rojo Carranza fatally injured herself at her home in Gainesville, a small city located just a few miles south of the Oklahoma border.
The girl’s condition seemed to wax and wane for a while, as doctors made changes to her regimen at an intensive care unit in a Dallas hospital, according to a GoFundMe started by her father when she was still alive. But Jocelynn slowly died over the following days — finally succumbing to her injuries on Feb. 8.
“This helplessness hurts my soul and it is not easy for me or for any of her relatives who were present in her life as a child and knowing that she is no longer with us breaks my heart into pieces,” Ernesto Alonso Rojo said in a series of updates to the fundraiser after his daughter passed away. “Although my heart and my soul are dying, at this moment I have to continue for myself and my other little cherubs.”
A separate GoFundMe was also started by the girl’s aunt.
The girl’s death came after months of relentless taunting by her sixth-grade classmates at Gainesville Intermediate School, a fifth and sixth-grade school located some 70 miles north of Dallas, according to comments her mother, Marbella Carranza, made to Univision.
The bullying was due to the girl’s Hispanic ethnicity — culminating with threats from other students that they would call Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) on her parents, her mother told the network. By the end of her life, Jocelynn attended counseling between once and twice per week due to the bullying, according to her mother.
During the bullying episodes, other students made fun of the girl by saying that she would have to live alone after her parents were deported, her mother added.
“I waited a whole week for a miracle that my daughter would be well, but unfortunately nothing could be done,” the grieving mother said. “My daughter will always live for me, and I will always love her.”
Now, the girl’s family wants a serious investigation into the cruel circumstances that led to Jocelynn’s too-young death.
