A bright Nigerian girl, a student at
a top American city high school, has jumped to her death after she was
humiliated in front of her classmates for cheating on a test. Omotayo Adeoye,
17, of The Bronx, was so ashamed that she jumped to her death in the Hudson
River Thursday, according to The New York Post.
Omotayo wrote a suicide note right on
her German-language exam that read, “I just want to go away forever on the
bottom of the river,” law-enforcement sources said.
Divers were still searching Friday night
for the biology whiz in the waters off Washington Heights, where she jumped in
Thursday afternoon.
The promising senior was caught
peeking at her cellphone during the German test at the Harlem HS for Math,
Science and Engineering, which is affiliated with the City College of New York.
Her teacher, Eva Malikova, “was
walking around the room and saw [Adeoye] on her phone,” a male classmate said.
“She snatched it away from her and
started screaming at her, ‘Oh, you shouldn’t be cheating! You guys shouldn’t be
cheating! You guys are lying to yourselves!’”
Adeoye burst into tears, sobbing,
“I’m sorry! I’m sorry!”
“Oh, you are not really sorry,”
Malikova allegedly snapped back. “That’s not a sincere apology!”
Law-enforcement sources confirmed the
classroom exchange.
At around 2:15 p.m., a teary-eyed
Adeoye scrawled her desperate note on the test, then asked to use the bathroom.
She never returned — instead walking
from the West 140th Street school to the Hudson River’s edge at West 165th
Street.
Shocked fishermen watched helplessly
as she placed her ID on a rock, then jumped in the water.
Adeoye — whose father told cops she
can’t swim — ignored their cries to go ashore, the witnesses told cops.
She appeared to be forcing herself
down, they said.
Her head bobbed briefly above the
surface before she was completely submerged.
The first 911 call came in at
3:35p.m., nearly an hour before school officials alerted cops to her
disappearance at 4:20p.m.
A Department of Education spokeswoman
said, “We are conducting an investigation into this tragic incident, and we are
taking immediate action.”
She said the DOE would do more to
address mental-health issues with students.
Malikova could not be reached for
comment, but several students said they heard her screaming in anguish at the
school this morning.
She did not teach any classes.
If it is confirmed that Adeoye killed
herself, it would bring the total number of public-school student suicides to
14 so far this year, the DOE said.
There were 14 suicides in the 2012-13
school year.
“Our thoughts and prayers are with
her family and her school community,” said Schools Chancellor Carmen Fariña.
“This must be a call to action.”
Source News Express
