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Tovonna Holton: Florida Teen Kills Herself After Nude Shower Video Is Posted To Snapchat

By Tara Dodrill
Published on: 00:59 PST, Jun 10, 2016

Tovonna Holton killed herself after a nude shower video was posted to Snapchat by her classmates at Wiregrass Ranch High School.

The Florida teen did not give permission for the nude video of her to be filmed. Tovonna Holton committed suicide just a few hours after the shower video was posted to Snapchat, WFLA reports.

Holton, from Wesley Chapel, took a gun from her mother’s purse, walked into the bathroom, and shot herself dead.

Levon Holton-Teamer, the 15-year-old girl’s mother, said she told her daughter to go clean her room and then went looking for her a while later when she hadn’t reappeared.

“I go into the bathroom, I couldn’t get into bathroom,” the grieving mother told local reporters. “The bathroom light was off so I tried to get in and I looked down and I saw the puddle of blood. I tried to apply the pressure, the pressure to her head. I tried to save her. My baby… my baby.”

Holton-Teamer also said that several hours before her daughter killed herself, she had mentioned a nude photo her friends had taken of her without permission. Tovonna Holton reportedly said she “owed them” over and over to her mother before going off to her room.

“I said, ‘What do you mean you owe them?’ I couldn’t understand what was wrong,” the mother added.

On what would have been Tovonna’s last day of her freshman year of high school, her family was forced to begin planning her funeral.

Angel Scott, the 15-year-old Florida girl’s aunt, said she got on Facebook to see if she could find out more about what had happened at school with her niece’s friends. Scott said it was then she discovered a nude video had been taken in the locker room shower and had been posted online.

The aunt is pleading with anyone who knows anything about the video or what led up to what is now being deemed “revenge porn” on social media to come forward.

“The kids started inboxing me. Everybody was out there talking about her and calling her names and they said it went up on social media, Snapchat,” Angel Scott added.

The Pasco County Sheriff is now investigating the incident at Wiregrass Ranch High School. Multiple allegations of cyberbullying were brought to his attention after the Tovonna Holton suicide.

During an interview with the Tampa Bay Times, Pasco County Sheriff’s Office representative Eddie Daniels said the law enforcement agency is continuing to “investigate all angles” related to the nude video taken in the school shower and posted to Snapchat.

So far, no arrests have been made for a crime that can legally be charged as the making of child pornography. No suspects have been named publicly. The Wiregrass Ranch High School has turned the investigation of the incident over to the sheriff’s office and is not making any comment about what happened in the locker room shower.

https://youtu.be/SrF7vo-GXVE

Tovonna Holton’s family is demanding justice for the posting of the nude shower video to Snapchat. The #stopbullying hashtag went viral after the story garnered national headlines.

Crystal Belle, a close friend of Tovonna’s, authored a now-viral Facebook post to bring awareness about the impact of cyberbullying.

“She [Tovonna Holton] took her own life after being filmed nude in the shower by peer students, who then shared and shamed her on Snapchat. My prayers go out to the family of this beautiful young woman. I hope that all schools and parents begin to attack the beast of bullying and social media.”

Although photos and videos uploaded to Snapchat are usually deleted after 24 hours, screenshots of the Tovonna Holton shower video were saved and reshared on multiple social media platforms.

[Image via Shutterstock]

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