There is a rainstorm outside that has turned into driving sleet and snow. This morning a seventeen-year-old boy jumped out of an eleventh floor window while at Dalton, his elite Manhattan private school. It occurred during lower school recess. Fourth graders had been playing on the sidewalk out front when the junior boy fell to his death. News reports claim that Dalton teachers “closed all the shades to keep students inside the building from seeing the scene outside.”

There are no facts on whether or not it was suicide, but the various shreds of information mention that he was a shining student who won academic awards and was very involved in extra-curriculars. His brother attended Dalton with him.

Due to privacy issues, sufficient details never surface to piece together the tragedy in any coherent way. It remains like a vague expanding blackness. The cursory news articles finish off by elaborating on “the prestigious Dalton school and its famous alumni,” moving away from the traumatic event. They read like anxious accounts of a young life cut short in an act of violence too horrifying, or too taboo, to even articulate.

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