"As the mother of Nick, I am asking you to take this story down immediately. You have plagiarized the well written report by Kim in the Akron Beacon Journal, you misinterpreted facts and you have wrongly accused my son of being gay. I am outraged and horrified. As the daughter of a gay mother I know the struggles of the gay community well. I do not appreciate you using my son as a poster child for your cause, there are enough good honest gay people who need your help, my son was not one of them.He was spit on and picked on to a terrible degree and what i don't understand is why his story is so unheard to the public. We heard so much about the other stories like this but most people didn't even hear about Nick and it feels like he has been forgotten about. Nick Kelo is just as important as anyone of the other tragic cases of bullying and he deserves to have his story told and not forgotten about. I would like Nick's mom to know that we are not saying or assuming that her son was gay in any form and believe her when she says he was not. But we feel his story is incredibly important and we just want people to know how terrible gay bullying is even when you're using it against someone who is not gay such as Nick Kelo. No one should feel as if they need to take their own life. So this is Nick's story and we hope all of you will read it and not misinterpret it into something it's not.
My son's death was a tragic accident the resulted from his frustration of repeated bullying, yes, but it goes back years and is related more to his intellectual gifts and abilities. He was in no way suicidal or depressed. He was too smart for that. He was frustrated and angry and made an impulsive 13 year old error in judgment which led to a tragic accident due to the report from the lab that shows no gun powder residue on his hands. My son was not gay, your story is inaccurate and you are doing a huge disservice to both him, the children in this school who are bullied still today and the gay community.
Please retract this story immediately."
At the tender age of 13, Nicholas Kelo Jr. knew what it was like to be relentlessly bullied. It may have been what persuaded him to pry open a safe inside his Rittman home and remove the gun that killed him.Now Nick's mother said that the gun went off by accident and that Kelo never really meant to commit suicide but we do not know if that is true or not. Either way he was picked on because others thought he was gay and it's not fair for anyone to be treated like that. So whether he was gay or not or whether he really meant to hurt himself or not, he should have not been treated the way he was and his death was absolutely tragic. I will not be posting links to any of the stories about him due to the sensitivity of his mother saying that what other websites are posting are untrue. We do not want to post anything false or tell a story that is taken out of context. We feel horrible for his family and we wish his mother and the rest of his family the best in this tragic time of their lives.
Each night when Nick's mother, Jacqueline, left the University of Akron, where she worked in the political science department, she would call her son and chat on her way home. When she came through the door, he routinely welcomed her with a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and carrots. But something was terribly wrong Feb. 23.
''I called at 6:30 and there was no answer,'' said the grieving mother, her voice fading. ''And I kept calling. There was no answer.''
When she arrived home, she found Nick near death from a gunshot wound, lying on the living room floor.
''Deep down in our hearts, this was not a child who would have planned to take his life,'' said the boy's father, Nicholas Sr. ''He may have been bullied to the point that he felt like he needed to protect himself.''
A&L
