News article #9

Tragedy in school: Boy dead!

Jumped from roof of well known school

By: Emma Westerlund

The well known Pencey Prep school was last Wednesday seriously shattered when one of the students, Robert Ackley, 17, took his own life by jumping from the roof of the school.

It was around 7 p.m. when the headmaster at Pencey, mr. Thurmer, first got the call about an emergency at the schoolyard. There a big part of the school’s students were gathered along with most of the staff. All eyes were directed against one single boy standing on the roof at the highest point of the dorm building. The police were summoned, but before they could reach the location, Robert Ackley had without saying as much as a word taken the final step out over the edge. After falling twelve meter, he hit the ground and died immediately from a crushed skull and several other serious injuries.

The time of death was clocked to 7.17 p.m. and the school stood shocked after the loss of a student. “It is absolutely horrible that something like this happens at our school or anywhere for that case”, Headmaster Thurmer commented and continued “This came like a bolt from the blue and nothing in the world could have prepared us for this terrible loss”.

The opinions among Robert’s fellow students upon this matter varied on the contrary a lot. “Ackley was always a very strange guy and in the end he was almost completely isolated, except for those times he yelled at people in the corridors and created scenes”, says Robert’s roommate at Pencey, Herb Gale. “At first we suspected that he took drugs or something like that, but then we figured he just wasn’t the type”, Herb adds.

Today it is still unclear if Robert Ackley really did take drugs and there are many question marks concerning his reasons for the suicide. Was he depressed and could no longer find the strength to carry on, or did he have some other hidden reasons for doing what he did? We can do no more than speculate and it is possible that no one will ever know about mr. Ackley’s intentions. The only thing we know for sure is that he died 7.17 p.m. the 16th of November and that he will always be missed by his family, friends and everyone else that loved him.