Aspects of Nex Benedict’s Death are Becoming Clear, but Questions Remain
An Oklahoma 16-year-old died after being beaten by peers in a girls bathroom at Owasso High School. Rumors and misinformation have swirled around the story ever since.
body camera footage released by the Owasso Police Department showed Nex Benefict the day before they died
by Evan Urquhart
The sudden death of a queer teen on February 8, one day after being “jumped” by three other youth at Owasso High School in Oklahoma, has led to an outpouring of grief and rage from members of the LGBTQ+ community, who fear the climate of anti-LGBTQ+ hatred in Oklahoma and nationwide contributed to this tragedy. Nex Benedict was a 16-year-old who “didn’t see themselves as male or female,” according to Sue Benedict, their grandmother and adopted mom.
Most of the direct quotes from Sue Benedict come from a story by reporter Bevan Hurley for the Independent. Sue Benedict told Hurley that Nex had been severely bullied at their high school, and that the bullying had increased in intensity at the beginning of the 2023 school year. Sue Benedict described Nex as “a straight-A student who enjoyed drawing, reading, playing video games Ark and Minecraft, and was devoted to their cat Zeus.”
Early reporting on Nex’s death in local Oklahoma media initially used the teenager’s legal name and pronouns associated with their sex assigned at birth. A GoFundMe created by the family still includes Nex’s previous name and pronouns, but was updated with a note from Sue Benedict correcting this and asking that the family be shown compassion for not having used the correct name and pronouns from the start. All reports thus far have pointed to Nex having been in a supportive and loving home.
The LGBTQ+ community first became aware of Nex’s death after a post by Pittsburgh Lesbian Correspondents, an LGBTQ+ blog run by community journalist Sue Kerr. It was Kerr who first used Nex’s chosen name and described them as nonbinary. The PGH Lesbian post included a quote from an early version of a story in 2 News Oklahoma, (the most recent version of which is linked above), that claimed Nex “couldn’t walk to the nurses’ station on their own.” This claim, which originated with a quote by a parent of one of Nex’s friends, has since been disputed by the school. The police department has released surveillance camera footage of Nex being escorted through the halls of the school in the company of an adult wearing a black “security” t-shirt. It is not clear how soon after the beating this happened, and at one or two points Nex seems slightly unsteady on their feet.
still from of surveillance footage from the video released by Owasso Police
The Owasso Police Department has released multiple additional recordings on their YouTube channel.
One video shows body camera footage from the hospital where a police officer identified by the Oklahoman as Caleb Thomson starts by asking Nex and Sue Benedict what happened. “I got jumped,” Nex says. (In the video, Nex’s legal name and AGAB pronouns are used for them.)
According the Nex’s description of the incident in this video, a group of teens, who Nex says they hadn’t known until recently, had been picking on Nex and their friends over how they dressed. (Nex is dressed in black bondage pants and a black t-shirt in the video, in what could be described as masculine apparel, and they display a masc-coded affect of bravado and nonchalance.) Previous reports have suggested the teens who attacked Nex were older, but in the video Nex references their attackers as “freshman” and themself as a sophomore.
Nex says the teens were laughing and picking on them, at which point Nex poured water on one of them from a water bottle they had with them. At this point the other youth attacked Nex, who fought back until falling to the ground where they “blacked out.”
Nex describes the incident as having happened around 1pm. The footage described as showing them walking out of the restroom includes a clock showing 2:07pm.
After hearing Nex’s description of events, Officer Thompson seems to be attempting to dissuade Sue Benedict from filing an official police report, claiming that Nex could be charged equally for having squirted water at the girls who beat them to the ground and put them in the hospital.
Throwing water on a person is considered battery in most of the U. S. In Oklahoma, as in all U. S. states, self-defense must be proportional to the initiating incident (for example, one cannot use deadly force to defend oneself against an attack that does not threaten one’s life).
Owasso Police have also released the 911 call by Sue Benedict the day after the fight. Sue Benedict describes Nex as “posturing” with their eyes rolled back, and breathing strangely. She asks the 911 operator to let Officer Thompson know that Nex isn’t doing well. Nex died in the hospital soon afterwards.
The behavior of Owasso Police in response to this tragedy has come under intense scrutiny in recent days. Reporting for her site The Handbasket, Marisa Kabas detailed her interactions with Dan Yancey, Chief of Owasso PD in an attempt to gain clarity about how the department is proceeding. After Owasso PD released a statement saying that preliminary results from the autopsy suggested Nex did not die “as a result of trauma,” which has been widely repeated in the mainstream press, Kabas sought more clarity about what definition of trauma was being used by the medical examiner and how the police understood the case. Yancey told Kabas,” We suspect what happen but unfortunately I can’t release what happen until the tox and other test results come back, sorry.”
Further information about the Owasso Police response to Nex’s death was surfaced by Judd Legum, for his Substack, Popular Information. Legum spoke with Lieutenant Nick Boatman, described as “a spokesperson for the Owasso Police.”
screenshot from Popular Information
The strange behavior of the Owasso Police has resulted in calls from leaders of the LGBTQ+ community for an investigation by the Department of Justice, according to a story by Erin Reed, for her Substack, Erin In the Morning.