Shonto Prep student commits suicide

As teachers and students walked by on their way to the cafeteria just before their lunch hour Wednesday, a Shonto Preparatory School student hanged herself from the bleachers at the school's stadium, a faculty member who witnessed the event reported.

"She did it in full view of the entire school," said the teacher, who asked that his name be withheld. "It was awful."

School Superintendent Richard McClements was out of his office Friday, but Shonto Community Governance Manager Robert K. Black, Jr., confirmed the death. Neither Black nor the teacher released the student's name.

"It did happen, and that's all I'm going to say about it," Black said.

He said Shonto officials planned to meet with the school's governing board and administration Friday night to formulate an appropriate community response.

A Navajo Nation Police officer at the Kayenta station declined to release details of the incident, referring a Navajo Times reporter to police headquarters in Window Rock. Capt. Ivan Tsosie, the officer in charge, did not return a phone call Friday.

The witness said the girl, a junior at the school, appeared to have tied shoelaces together to make a noose. Upon seeing her hanging, some faculty members immediately rushed to support her body while they tried to get the noose off her neck, he said. When they couldn't undo it, a student offered a knife and someone cut the noose.

Someone immediately started CPR on the girl, according to the witness, and she was rushed to the hospital where she was later pronounced dead.

The teacher said the suicide stunned both the faculty and the 200-member student body.

"This is a place where everybody's intimately connected to everybody else," he said. "Several faculty members were related to her."

The teacher said the Indian Health Service immediately sent grief counselors to the school to meet with both students and faculty members.

"They're still around," he said Friday. "Every single faculty member has wept openly."

Not much teaching has gone on since the event, according to the teacher.

"We're just showing movies and going home early," he said Friday. "I'm standing here watching the students come back from lunch. Some are talking and laughing and acting pretty normal, and others, when they walk by the place where she died, just stand there for a long time."

According to the teacher the death was the close-knit community's second suicide this year. A school employee and recent graduate also took his own life, though not in front of people, he said.

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