Details emerge in teen's suicide at school

The 16-year-old student who jumped off a building to his death in the Chenghua district of Chengdu, Sichuan province, on Sunday, had suicidal tendencies, according to a report by Xinhua News Agency.

Early on Wednesday, Xinhua reporters reviewed all the surveillance video from Chengdu No 49 Middle School at a bureau of the Chengdu police.

At 6:16 pm in the video, the student — surnamed Lin — could be seen leaving his classroom. At 6:49, video captured him as he fell, the report said.

A few minutes earlier, Lin could be seen entering the school's pump house on the lower ground floor and apparently using a sharp object to cut his left wrist. He appeared to be in low spirits in the video, the report said.

Police checked Lin's cell phone and found that he had written a message via QQ app to a friend in June saying that he thought of the building at the middle school every day and figured leaping from it would get rid of all his troubles.

In early May, he had written other comments belittling himself and expressing anxiety. Some students told police that Lin was extremely shy, the Xinhua report said.

Police found a note in Lin's pocket after he jumped. The note, intended for a girl, read: "I weep three times a week."

Mi Ping, chief of the school's safety center, told Xinhua that the school had delayed notifying Lin's family of the boy's death for two hours because the boy's head and face were badly damaged in the fall and it was simply difficult to recognize him.

Also, the boy's head teacher had been shaken by the incident. Before she returned home from school on Sunday, she had left behind her cell phone with the contact number of Lin's family. It took time to find the number, Mi said.

The boy's family had said some video seemed to be missing. But the police had quickly secured all the surveillance video related to the case, so Lin's family was unable to see it all on Sunday evening at the school, Mi said.

At around 11 am on Monday, the boy's father, together with a family member and a lawyer, watched the surveillance video at a police office. Some of Lin's movements were not visible because the platform linking the fourth floor of the school lab and gymnasium was an inaccessible area not covered by the camera. That might have given the impression that some of the video was missing, but this was not the case, police said.

Lin leaped from this platform, the police said.

A netizen claiming to be the boy's mother said that her son had been fine when he went to school at 5:40 pm on Sunday and that he said, "Happy Mother's Day."

"But one hour later, such a big thing had happened," the netizen said on social media.