She was tormented twice — once by school bullies, and then again by social media.
The young New Jersey teen who at her high school died by suicide just hours after getting a taunting text about footage of the beating posted online, her devastated dad said Friday.
“They used the video to continue to harass and intimidate her and make fun of her,” Michael Kuch told The Post of his daughter, Adriana Kuch.
Hours before Adriana’s death, one of the girls who recorded the assault in the hallway at Central Regional High School in Berkeley Township sent Adriana a text mocking her for being covered in “dripping blood” and getting her “a– whooped.”
The tormented teen was driven to suicide because she was embarrassed footage of the beatdown spread rapidly on TikTok and Snapchat, Kuch told The Daily Mail.
“She was so embarrassed that they jumped her. She would say, ‘I don’t want to be made fun of,’” he told the outlet.
“It was like she was attacked twice. It used to be you’d go to school, get bullied and then you left. But now you come home and you keep getting bullied — they still keep picking at you home,” he said.
One of the teenage girls responsible for the bloody on-campus beating Feb. 1 continues to churn out disrespectful social media posts even after Adriana’s heartbreaking death, Kuch told The Post..
“[She] has still been posting stuff even after Adrianna’s death on Snapchap,” hesaid, the bullies’ parents should put an end to the tech-based torture.
“I want to know why their daughters still have cell phones,” he fumed.
Adriana was found dead in a closet in her home Feb. 3, two days after a video posted online showed the cruel assault while walked with her boyfriend, Jason Lopez, down a school hallway.
During the beating — in which a group of girls hit her with a water bottle and taunted her — all but one of the girls took video of the attack, Kuch said.
The only girl who didn’t was “busy smashing my daughter’s face in with the bottle,” Kuch said.
Adriana Kuch, 14, was attacked by a group of girls and a video was posted online.Facebook / Michael KuchAdriana was captured on video being attacked by a group of girls at Central Regional High School in Berkeley Township.Kuch said one of the bullies allegedly instigated the ugly attack because she was jealous about Adriana’s friendship with another girl — and blames the school district for failing to protect his daughter.
“I was not told that she was hit in the face with the bottle. I was not told that she blacked out. I was not told that there [were] multiple girls involved,” he told The Post. “I was told there was one girl involved. And they didn’t even call an ambulance after my daughter was blacked out after being smashed in the face three times.”
“If those videos hadn’t been posted, these girls would have ended up with a one-day suspension or in no trouble at all,,” he fumed.
Three girls have been charged with third-degree felony assault and a fourth was charged with disorderly conduct.
Michael Kuch is demanding accountability from the school in Ocean County, New Jersey, where he says she had long been bullied.WABC“Adriana was beautiful and she loved everyone, she did not care about race, the world would be a better place if everyone was as colorblind as she was,” Michael Kuch wrote.WABCEarlier, Kuch denied the attack was racially motivated — insisting a theory about the vicious assault was “garbage” — after allegations popped up on social media.
“Adriana was beautiful and she loved everyone, she did not care about race, the world would be a better place if everyone was as colorblind as she was,” Kuch wrote on Facebook Thursday, responding to speculation that race played a role in the violence.
Kuch posted a screengrab from an Instagram Story of what appears to be a rally held to protest the incident.
Over the image, an Instagram user wrote, “They are protesting about that white girl.”
“Nah, cuz wtf why does black people do that to the white girl,” the user continued, claiming “black people know that white [people] hate them still.”
Kuch’s daughter was white; the race of the assailants in the disturbing footage was unclear.
He responded to the Instagram Story, saying, “People are sending me garbage like this, I am not here to make it about race.”
Kuch has insisted bullying played a role in his daughter’s death.
“Adriana was beautiful and she loved everyone, she did not care about race, the world would be a better place if everyone was as colorblind as she was,” he wrote WABC.
More than 6,500 community members have signed on to a titled “Stop the Violence at Central Regional High School.”
The petition was launched by Racheal O’Dea, who wrote that her daughter also was “jumped and physically assaulted by MULTIPLE girls” at the school in January 2022.
“She had reported threats and their previous stalking to the school weeks before it happened and NOTHING was done! The attack was recorded and sent across social media,” O’Dea wrote.
A screengrab from an Instagram Story in which a person claimed the attack was related to race.Facebook / Michael KuchShe said the family has filed a lawsuit against the district “due to their negligence and involvement.”
“Now here we are almost a year later, and we have now lost a beautiful 14-year-old soul who was brutally attacked at Central Regional HS just days before taking her own life. A life stolen way too soon. Parents our kids are not safe!” O’Dea wrote in the petition.
“This school is too busy trying to save their own asses than do their job! The bottom line is the violence at Central Regional needs to STOP! There needs to be a change in administration, there needs to be more security, the school should not be able to solely label these incidents,” she continued.
O’Dea claimed the district describes incidents of violence as “hallway disturbances” to avoid calling police.
“Students do better … stop hurting each other and if you see someone being hurt call 911! It is not a fight, it is not an altercation, its not a hallway disturbance ….. ITS CALLED ASSAULT,” she wrote.
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Adriana Kuch was attacked by a group of girls and a video was posted online.Facebook / Michael Kuch
Michael Kuch shared images showing his bruised daughter after the assault. Advertisement
Adriana was assaulted while walking with her boyfriend at Central Regional High School. Advertisement
In the footage shared online, Adriana was seen being attacked with a water bottle as she walked in the hallway with her boyfriend. A person was reportedly heard yelling: “That’s what you get, you stupid a– b—!”
“They think it’s fun to attack people and take videos and post them,” her dad told WABC.
“Getting hit with a water bottle didn’t hurt Adriana, what hurt her was the embarrassment and humiliation, they just kept coming at her,” Kuch said.
“My daughter actually blacks out and they don’t call an ambulance, they take her to the nurse’s office,” he said, adding Adriana had “never been in a fight before, she’s 98 pounds, 5-2 and she loves everybody.”
Two days after the incident, Kuch was found dead at home.Facebook / Michael KuchOn Thursday, Schools Superintendent Triantafillos Parlapanides defended the school’s response to the bullying, citing its policy of not reporting incidents to police.
“If a situation warrants it, we’ll call (police), but in this case the students were suspended immediately,” he told The Post, adding the students involved face criminal charges.
Kuch said when he asked why the girls hadn’t been expelled, school officials told him it’s not the district’s “policy,” according to the Daily Mail.
“If they had only just called the police and the girls would have been rounded up there and then, everybody would have seen it was wrong,” he told the outlet. “It pains me how easily this all could have been solved.”
The day after she was attacked, Adriana stayed home, where she lived with her dad, 16-year-old brother and two stepsisters Her mom died when Adriana was 7 years old.
“We spent time together … she decided that she wanted to go back to school the next day,” Kuch told the Daily Mail. “She went to her boyfriend’s house during the day. I got home at around 5 o’clock.”
“We had McDonald’s and I got her her favorite, the crispy chicken sandwich. We had dinner, we talked about friends and making life choices … I kind of liked to lecture her,” he said, adding Adriana appeared to be “in a good mood.”
He said cellphone records show Adriana sent her boyfriend a last text message at 10:46 p.m. before she ended her life.
At 5 a.m. the next day, Kuch said, he was in the kitchen when his wife went to wake Adriana up.
“I just heard her screaming, ‘No!’ I ran downstairs and see immediately that her bed’s empty. At first I thought, ‘Did she sneak out to her boyfriend’s?’ That’s when I turned left, and I saw her there, in the closet,” he told the outlet.
“She had on the same clothes that she’d been wearing the day before. A brown jacket I had just bought her. She loved that jacket,” he said.
Maureen Brogan, a counselor who leads the Traumatic Loss Coalitions for Youth at Rutgers University, told NJ.com that research shows bullying alone is not thought to cause suicide, but can be a contributing factor.
“What we know in the field is that suicide is an extremely complex issue,” Brogan, who sits on the state’s Child Fatality and Near Fatality Review Board, told the outlet.
“It’s multi-faceted. It’s not one thing causes it, but it is a combination of risk factors,” she added.
Over 200 students walked out of class Wednesday to protest and demand further action be taken.Facebook/Jennifer FerroSchool districts in New Jersey reported 18,576 incidents of violence, vandalism, weapons, substance use and bullying in the 2019-20 school year, NJ.com reported, citing data from the state Department of Education.
In 2019, one of six New Jersey high school students, or 16.4%, reported being bullied on school property, while 13.8% reported being cyberbullied, according to data culled by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
On Friday morning, about his grief.
“Last night I was so tired I honestly could not cry. I slept for almost 5 hours and now back to tears. sleep may have been a bad idea,” he wrote.
