A 16-year-old student in a small Oklahoma town outside Tulsa died after what police said was a “physical altercation” in a high school bathroom, sparking outrage from gay rights groups. and transgender who said the student was attacked because of his gender. identity.
The student, known among his peers as Nex Benedict, often used the pronouns they and them, and told family members that they did not see themselves strictly as men or women. Under an Oklahoma law passed in 2022, students must use bathrooms that correspond to their birth gender.
As of Wednesday afternoon, no arrests had been made in connection with the altercation, which occurred Feb. 7 in the girls’ bathroom at Owasso High School. Police said the case was still under investigation.
The apparent severity of the altercation and the student’s death a day later have focused national attention on how school officials and authorities are handling it.
The Owasso Police Department said in a statement Tuesday that no report had been made about the incident until the injured student was taken to a hospital by his family later in the day. At that point, a school resource officer went to the hospital, police said. The student was discharged and went home, but he was rushed to the hospital the next day and he died there, police said in their statement.
“It is unknown at this time whether the death is related to the incident at the school or not,” the statement said, adding that investigators are awaiting the results of an autopsy and toxicology reports.
No other students were deemed to need outside medical care after the incident, the school said in a statement.
The school district issued a statement Tuesday suggesting there had been “speculation and misinformation” about the circumstances surrounding the altercation, which it said lasted less than two minutes before being broken up by other students “along with a staff member who was supervising out of school”. the public bathroom.” The school said all of the students involved “walked under their own power to the assistant principal’s office and the nurse’s office.”
The school district said the students’ parents and guardians were given the option to file a police report after they were notified about the altercation, adding that any student found involved “will receive disciplinary consequences.”
The district did not say what discipline was imposed.
A school district spokesperson, Jordan Korphage, said no further details could be provided due to privacy laws, nor could the district provide information about previous reports of harassment against Nex.
“Nex didn’t see himself as a man or a woman,” Sue Benedict, Nex’s grandmother, told The Independent. “Nex saw himself right in the middle. He was still learning about it, Nex was teaching me that.”
Ms Benedict said that after the altercation at school, she was told Nex had been suspended for two weeks. After returning home from the initial hospital visit, she said, Nex complained of a headache. The next day, Nex collapsed at his home and was rushed to the hospital, she said.
The death renewed scrutiny of anti-transgender rhetoric by Oklahoma officials, including state Superintendent of Education Ryan Walters, whose agency has been aggressive in trying to ban what it calls “radical gender theory” in schools.
“It’s dangerous,” Walters said in a video made by the agency last year. “It puts our girls in danger.”
The video highlighted a bathroom fight the previous year in which, according to a lawsuit, a female student was “seriously” injured in a fight with a transgender student.
Advocates for nonbinary and transgender students said the state’s policy on gender and bathrooms had led to more reports of confrontations in schools.
“That policy and the messaging around it has led to students being much more vigilant in bathrooms,” said Nicole McAfee, executive director of Freedom Oklahoma, which advocates for gay and transgender rights. Students who do not present themselves as obviously male or female are questioned by other students, they said. “There’s a feeling of ‘do you belong here?'”
The state education agency sparked outrage from transgender rights groups last month after it named Chaya Raichik, who runs Libs of TikTok, an X account that has posted anti-gay and anti-transgender content, to serve on the agency’s Library Media Advisory Committee. that reviews the suitability of the content of the school library.
In 2022, Raichik reposted a video of an Owasso School District teacher expressing support for gay and transgender students. The teacher was later fired.
“Chaya is on the front lines, showing the world exactly what the radical left is all about: lowering standards, pornography in schools and furthering the indoctrination of our children,” Walters told The Oklahoman last month.
Korphage, a spokesperson for Owasso schools, said students who identified as transgender or nonbinary would be treated “with dignity and respect, like all students.”
She added: “Our goal is to include all students regardless of race, gender, religion or background.”