Coroner’s jury leads to charge in teen’s suicide
KANSAS CITY, Mo. — A manager of a small-town Dairy Queen accused of bullying a teenage employee who later killed himself was charged Wednesday with involuntary manslaughter following a rare investigation in Missouri requested by the local coroner.
A felony complaint alleges that Harley Branham, 21, harassed the 17-year-old employee between September and Dec. 21, when he fatally shot himself outside his family’s home. Branham testified during the coroner’s inquest that she never bullied the boy, Kenneth Suttner, and that he seemed not to be bothered by jokes; other witnesses said he’d been bullied for years at school and at work in Fayette.
“We wanted to be very cautious and responsible,” April Wilson, the special prosecutor overseeing the case, said before filing the second-degree involuntary manslaughter charge. “Both sides of the issue are extremely important. A young man is dead. But we also want to acknowledge that it’s not easy being in public education.”
The Howard County coroner sought an official inquest following Suttner’s death, a process similar to a grand jury investigation but public. Such investigations can be sought if a coroner believes a death could be related to a continuing safety and health hazard. In this case, the coroner said he pursued the inquest to publicly acknowledge bullying as a problem.