Antigay Bullying Suicide in Pa.

Fourteen-year-old Brandon Bitner of Mount Pleasant Mills, Pa., walked in front of a moving tractor-trailer in the early hours of Friday morning, killing him instantly. Bitner's friends say he was driven to suicide after being bullied because he was perceived to be gay.

"It was because of bullying," friend Takara Jo Folk wrote in a letter to The Daily Item of Sunbury, Pa. "It was not about race, or gender, but they bullied him for his sexual preferences and the way he dressed. Which they wrongly accused him of."

Bitner, a freshman at Midd-West High School in Middleburg, dressed in emo-style clothing and was bullied mercilessly for it, according to fellow students. "Anyone in our school who looks different is tortured," sophomore Emily Beall-Ellersieck told The Daily Item.

Midd-West High School held an antibullying assembly just days before Bitner's suicide, but students said no one took it seriously.

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