CW: This story contains depictions of anti-LGBTQ+ violence.
It’s been three weeks since Nex Benedict, 16, a nonbinary student at Owasso High School in Owasso, Oklahoma, died the day after a fight with three girls in the bathroom at the school. A funeral was held for Nex on Feb. 15. On Feb. 20, the teen’s story began to hit mainstream media after their grandmother, Sue Benedict — who was their legal guardian — gave an interview to Bevan Hurley of the U.K. newspaper, The Independent.
Since then, most major outlets from the New York Times to Teen Vogue have reported the same details: the fight, a trip to the nurse’s office, a trip to the ER where Nex and Sue were both interviewed, and then home. The next day, Nex collapsed and died.
Governor Kevin Stitt released a statement regarding Benedict’s death.
Stitt said, “Sarah and I are saddened to learn of the death of Nex Benedict, and our hearts go out to Nex’s family, classmates, and the Owasso community. The death of any child in an Oklahoma school is a tragedy — and bullies must be held accountable. As we await the results of the investigation, I urge Owasso Police and Owasso Public Schools to be forthcoming and transparent with the public.”
Initially, Owasso police said the medical examiner’s office released preliminary information that indicated Benedict “did not die as a result of trauma” and that toxicology reports were pending.
The Owasso PD clarified those statements on Feb. 27 to NBC News. Lt. Nick Boatman, a police spokesperson, told NBC News that was not what the statement was intended to mean.
“We did not interpret that in any way,” Boatman said of the word “trauma,” which NBC reports was used by the medical examiner’s office. Boatman said that the medical examiner’s office did not say it had ruled out the fight as “causing or contributing to Benedict’s death” and that “people shouldn’t make assumptions either way.”
Boatman also said that public pressure and international media coverage of Benedict’s death had forced the police department to release information earlier than usual. Boatman said the Owasso police department also wanted to address a “fury of misinformation on social media,” including that Benedict was “beat to a bloody pulp and had to be carried out and wasn’t taken to the nurse” — all of which he said isn’t true.
Boatman said the police department released video and audio recordings to address similar misinformation about Benedict’s injuries immediately after the fight and to show that they were escorted to the nurse’s office. Subsequent video shows Nex walking on their own without help, with a school security officer.
Police have also released body camera video of an interview with Sue and Nex Benedict in the hospital, as well as 911 audio from the day Benedict died. Boatman told NBC that “the department provided the video and the 911 calls to Benedict’s family through their lawyer before it released the information publicly.”
Yet despite these details, no arrests have been made and no charges have been filed.
So who or what killed Nex Benedict?
The argument can be made that despite the “thoughts and prayers” messaging from Gov. Stitt, he was one of the perpetrators of the bullying that led to Nex Benedict’s death. In May 2022 and May 2023, Stitt signed a series of anti-LGBTQ+ legislation into law, which the Human Rights Campaign decried. (Ironically, in 2022, Oklahoma became the first state to prohibit the use of nonbinary gender markers on birth certificates.)
In August 2023, Stitt went further. After two failed attempts by the Oklahoma state legislature to define a woman and a man based on their sex assigned at birth, Stitt signed an executive order limiting those definitions. Nex Benedict — assigned female at birth — did not fit Stitt’s new definitions of binary gender. Since the beginning of the school year, just days after Stitt signed that executive order, Nex had been bullied by fellow students, according to Sue and what Nex told police at the hospital.
That executive order applied to schools and state institutions. It stipulates definitions for certain terms, like “man,” “boy,” “woman,” “girl,” “father” and “mother.” The narrow definitions in the so-called “Women’s Bill of Rights” exclude trans and nonbinary people or anyone whose gender does not fit into the binary categories of male or female. The language doesn’t even address individuals with chromosomal variations, like intersex people.
In September 2023, Oklahoma State Superintendent of Public Instruction Ryan Walters proposed an emergency rule prohibiting school districts and local school sites from altering any sex or gender designations in any prior year student records without authorization from the State Board of Education.
It was in this context, as a two-spirit nonbinary teen — Sue and Nex are tribal citizens of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma — living on a reservation with their grandmother in Oklahoma where 35 bills targeting LGBTQ+ people were filed last year and another 50 this year, according to the ACLU.
How is this not a hate crime and why have there been no arrests? Native News Online stated that Boatman said that foul play is suspected. “We are investigating a crime,” Boatman said. “The investigator in this case suspected foul play … in reference to the reported assault and battery.”
Surveillance footage released by the Owasso police Feb. 23 shows Nex being escorted by Owasso Public School Security from the school nurse’s office to the principal’s office and then leaving the school with their legal guardian, Sue Benedict.
Nex is walking normally, carrying a backpack and a water bottle and is not limping or staggering or showing signs of obvious trauma. They are conversing with the security officer, although there is no sound on the video. Nex is quite small — significantly shorter than the security officer, suggesting they could easily be overpowered, particularly in an altercation with three other teens.
In a 911 call released on Feb. 23 by the Owasso police, Sue Benedict tells the operator, “I need to get an ambulance here quick, please…I don’t know what’s going wrong… [they] fell at school — or [they] got beat up at school yesterday and I took [them] to the hospital… I need someone here now.”
On the call, Sue describes Nex’s labored breathing, their eyes rolling in the back of their head and their hands clenching. All signs of a seizure or other trauma.
Sue says, “I hope this ain’t from [their] head. They were supposed to have checked [them] out good.”
EMTs performed CPR on Nex and transported them to an area hospital where they were pronounced dead.
A search warrant issued on Feb. 9 and filed with the Owasso Municipal Court on Feb. 21 shows investigators took 137 photographs at the school, swabbed two stains from the bathrooms, and seized records and documents of the students involved in the altercations.
An attorney for the Benedict family said in a statement: “The Benedicts know all too well the devastating effects of bullying and school violence, and pray for meaningful change wherein bullying is taken seriously and no family has to deal with another preventable tragedy.”
The statement said, “The Benedict family calls on all school, local, state and national officials to join forces to determine why this happened, to hold those responsible to account and to ensure it never happens again.”
For now, as vigils for Nex Benedict are held nationwide and Sue Benedict pursues an independent investigation into her grandchild’s death, more questions than answers surround that death. As do questions over how much the war on LGBTQ+ kids being waged by the GOP is contributing to the way Nex Benedict was treated in the months, days and hours before their tragic death.
PGN reached out to the Owasso police department but had not heard back at presstime.