Two More Suicides.....Or Is It Just One?

The internet was all abuzz with the news that another LGBTQ teenager had committed suicide after repeated episodes of bullying at school.

Eighteen-year-old Jefferson High School Student Lance Lundsten died Saturday and, according to local news channel KSAX, Lundsten had recently revealed on Facebook that he was gay, and some students at his high school had begun to bully him for his sexual orientation.

And then the Sheriff's Office confirmed that they believe Lundsten's death to be a suicide, though they have not released any details about the medical emergency call that was made on Saturday.

Awful news, and yet, maybe it didn't quite happen that way.

There are now conflicting reports about Lundsten's death, and it might not have been a suicide.

According to autopsy reports, Lance Lundsten died from cardiac edema, a condition caused by an enlarged heart. Though toxicology reports are still some six to eight weeks away, it seems that there is no evidence that drugs or alcohol played any role in his death.

Lundsten's father reportedly called KSAX and said that the coroner ruled that Lance died not of suicide, but coronary edema. He said his son had an enlarged heart, and that neither drugs nor alcohol was found in the teen's system.

Lance Lundsten was gay; and he was bullied at school, but right now it doesn't seem as though his death was a suicide as a result of bullying.

The story continues to unfold.

But then we have another teenager dead over the weekend, and this one is a suicide; and it is the result of bullying, though Tiffani Maxwell wasn't gay.

She was just a target.

Tiffani Maxwell was apparently bullied so badly that, after fellow students falsely told teachers they had seen her doing drugs, and the school subsequently expelled her, that she took her own life.

Her mother, Sandy, told news channels: "She got text messages, saying 'Tiffani you're in rehab.' 'You're on drugs.'"

She wasn't the gay kid, she was just a kid; she wasn't bullied because she was gay, she was bullied because other kids have nothing better to do than taunt and harass a fellow student.

And now she's dead.

Lance Lundsten

Tiffani Maxwell