A row of red metal lockers lines a school hallway next to a closed wooden door.
RALEIGH, N.C. - A North Carolina court rejected claims a charter school was responsible for the death by suicide of an eighth-grader who sent a disturbing message to a group chat a week before he died, causing alarm among his fellow students and teachers.
North Carolina courts have allowed such claims in cases where the victim has a “special relationship” with an organization, such as a mental institution, but not to the broader category of schools, the North Carolina Court of Appeals ruled Aug. 19. The question of whether a state law protecting schools against liability is overbroad was moot because a jury considered that claim and rejected it, the court said.
Silas Tulachan committed suicide in 2022 at age 13 while he was an eighth-grader at Southern Wake Academy, a charter school. His parents sued the school the following year, seeking damages for negligence and wrongful death. They claimed the school failed to warn them about a “threat of self-harm” in the weeks before his death.
The evidence included a message Silas sent to a group chat a week before his death saying “It won’t be funny when I’m gone.” Two students in the group worried he was suicidal, and a parent emailed a sixth-grade teacher about those concerns. That teacher forwarded the email to one of Silas’ teachers, who pulled him out of class twice over three days to ask about his mental condition.
Both times the boy said he was OK, and his parents said they considered him “happy and well-adjusted.” But later that week Silas lost a close election for student-body president and killed himself the following day.
The parents sued the school claiming Southern Wake violated its own employee handbook as well as the “Say Something” program endorsed by the Sandy Hook Promise nonprofit. The school moved to dismiss the case, citing a North Carolina law limiting negligence claims to gross negligence, “wanton conduct” or intentional wrongdoing.
The trial judge dismissed the negligence claim with prejudice but allowed a jury to decide the remaining claims, which the school won in May 2025. The parents appealed, but the North Carolina Court of Appeals affirmed the judgment in an opinion by Judge Tom Murry.
The plaintiffs argued the trial court should have allowed their negligence claim to proceed despite the state statute barring lawsuits over failure to comply with “any component of a school-based mental health plan.” That language didn’t bar common-law negligence lawsuits, the parents argued.
The appeals court disagreed, saying ordinary negligence can apply to “special relationships” involving prisoners and mental-health patients, but not students. North Carolina appeals courts have rejected similar claims, including one involving students at a school for “behaviorally and emotionally handicapped children” who shot and robbed someone after stepping off the bus.
“Because North Carolina courts have long refused to recognize such an all-encompassing special relationship that extends to injuries outside of the school’s control, we decline to do so here,” the court said.
The plaintiffs also argued the North Carolina statute limiting school liability was unfair because it immunized schools “for careless conduct toward the children most deserving of their care.” The school argued the statute must be strictly constructed. The appeals court said both sides made “compelling arguments” but the point was moot, since the jury rejected the statutory claims after trial.
Dowling PC represented the plaintiffs, while Hartzog Law Group represented Southern Wake.
