An 11-year-old Bronx girl did the unthinkable when she took her own life by hanging herself from a bedroom door after sending suicidal texts to friends.
According to the New York Daily News, family and friends are unclear as to why Wilnery Polanco-Uben killed herself after skipping school on Monday.
Landlord Bobby Singh said he heard screaming in the Croes Ave. apartment about 7 p.m., ran downstairs and found the girl’s mother in hysterics.
Singh told reporters:
“She said her daughter was missing. Everyone in the building began searching for her. We opened the door in the apartment, but no one saw her. We looked outside. We looked everywhere.
After about 20 minutes, my cousin looked at their apartment again and that’s when he saw her. She was hanging behind the door, but no one noticed because the door was opened and she was behind it.”
Another neighbor said the mother then ran out of the building screaming, “My daughter is choking. Help! Help.”
Police say Wilnery sent friends suicidal text messages hours before she killed herself and according to a source “wasn’t happy with her life and talked about hating the way things were going in her life,”
Singh said students from Intermediate School 98 stopped by the house late Monday and told him Wilnery had threatened to kill herself that day.
“I don’t know why no one stopped her,” he said. “She was such a beautiful, happy little girl. I just don’t understand how something could happen to someone so young.”
A source at IS 98 said administrators were not told about the texts and that Wilnery was not in school Monday because she claimed to have an appointment.
Police said there is no evidence of bullying, but nothing has been ruled out. No one under the age of 15 committed suicide in the city in 2007 or 2008.
Our thoughts and prayers go out to the Wilnery family.
