Any report that my office has failed or refused to act is inaccurate and I wanted to clarify this for the sake of the Smith family as they do not need the added burden to the already incomprehensible pain that they are experiencing. When all relevant facts are available, my office will advise the Coffee County Sheriff’s Department on what charges, if any, we believe are appropriate to help guide it in that decision. However, procedurally, no charging decisions have been made by my office nor has the Coffee County Sheriff’s Department asked for a decision since the investigation has not been completed. Ethically, I am prohibited from commenting on an open investigation or prosecution. My office has encouraged, cooperated in and supported the investigation into the events leading to this death. I express my heartfelt condolences to his family. I, like the rest of the community, am deeply saddened by the tragic loss of the young life of Channing Smith. In a statement, Northcott defended his office’s handling of the case, adding that the investigation is ongoing and charges could still be filed: The district attorney has come under fire for saying same-sex couples aren’t entitled to protection against domestic violence and calling Islam an “evil belief system.” They told us that they didn’t have the resources to get into the phones,” he said.
“My dad and I had to press the issue and tell them to get a search warrant. He said that investigators spent only a day on the case, “didn’t confiscate the kids’ phones,” claiming that they didn’t have the technology to “bypass the passcodes.” Joshua Smith said Coffee County District Attorney Craig Northcott is not adequately investigating the teens who allegedly humiliated his little brother on social media. “My dad is ultra-conservative, but would never disown him, but him being gay or anything like that would have been a hard conversation.”īeing outed or cast as “gay, queer, or a sissy,” especially in an environment like that, would be devastating for a 16-year-old boy, Smith added. “You could be gay and still like the Confederate flag and shoot pistols. Keylee said that teens had bullied Channing even before the social media attack, calling him names and saying that “no one liked him” because he sometimes “talked in a girly voice and walked with sass.”Īlthough he seemed bright and happy, Channing grew up in a “stereotypical small, Southern town,” his brother said. The teen who posted the screenshots did not respond to BuzzFeed News’ request for comment. He was trying to find himself and people called him bisexual, but he never classified specifically as that.” He was kind and loving and a very good person,” the 17-year-old said, adding that when the messages hit social media, Channing told her “how bad it made him feel and it was a mistake. Hailey Meister, who said she had been dating Channing for about a month before he killed himself, told BuzzFeed News the messages were old and posted only “to humiliate him.” “She was just doing it to be mean,” said Keylee, who started a group called Justice for Channing and helped organize a memorial for her classmate. According to Keylee Duty, a junior at the school, the girl was mad that she didn’t know about the sexting and posted the screenshots to be vindictive.
Joshua Smith, who lives in Kentucky with his family, is also still trying to process his younger brother’s death.Ĭhanning allegedly got into an argument with another teenager who is close friends with the boy whom he had messaged with. so he went in to check on him.” Joshua Smith said. “The light was still on under his door when my dad got up at 4 a.m. His last posting on Instagram was about people he couldn’t trust.”Ĭhanning’s father found his son's body after he woke up and noticed the light was still on in his room.
“When he saw the screenshots on social media he called some people around 10 p.m. “They were graphic texts and there was no room for Channing to be able to claim it was a misunderstanding,” Joshua Smith, his older brother, told BuzzFeed News. The 16-year-old, who wanted to be an engineer and loved motorcycles, punk rock music, and Corvettes, had not openly discussed his sexuality or identified as LGBTQ, according to his girlfriend and brother. A teenager in Tennessee died by suicide after a classmate posted private, explicit messages between him and another boy on Instagram and Snapchat, outing him as bisexual, said his family, who is calling for an investigation into the “social media bullying.”Ĭhanning Smith, a junior at Coffee County Central High School in Manchester, killed himself Sunday night hours after he found out that his peers had seen sexually explicit Facebook messages between him and another male classmate, his family said.