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Editor’s note: This story has been updated. It contains descriptions of violence against a nonbinary person.

Nex Benedict, a nonbinary high school sophomore died on February 8, the day after reportedly being beaten by classmates in the bathroom of their high school in Owasso, Oklahoma.

An anonymous source who identified herself as a friend of Benedict’s mother told local news outlet KJRH that the 16-year-old was attacked by three older classmates on February 7, adding that she believed Benedict died from “complications from brain trauma.” The source claimed that although Benedict couldn’t walk to the nurse on their own following the incident, school staff did not call an ambulance. According to KJRH, Benedict’s grandmother brought the student to the hospital after the altercation.

“I know at one point, one of the girls was pretty much repeatedly beating [their] head across the floor,” the source told KJRH.

The Owasso Police Department (OPD) told KJRH that they were called to Bailey Medical Center on the afternoon of February 7. When they arrived, Benedict’s parents told police their child had been involved in a fight at school. OPD provided a statement saying that the cause of death has not yet been made public.

Since Benedict’s death on February 8, they have been repeatedly misgendered and deadnamed in media reports.

“As many are learning of the horrific news out of Owasso, OK, many news outlets, and therefore, many of you, are using their dead name,” the official X account for Oklahoma County Democrats wrote in a February 19 post. “Their name is Nex Benedict. They were a 4.0 student. They liked cats. They deserved to live. May they find peace now.”

Benedict’s grandmother, Sue Benedict, told The Independent that other students started bullying Nex at the beginning of the 2023 school year. The Independent notes that the 2023 school year started just four months which was a few months after a bill requiring public school students to use bathrooms that matched the sex on their birth certificates became law.

The LGBTQ+ advocacy group Freedom Oklahoma, as well as numerous progressive and LGBTQ+ media outlets (such as the Los Angeles Blade, Daily Kos, and LGBTQ Nation) pointed out that Benedict’s death comes as Oklahoma’s head education official, state superintendent Ryan Walters, continues to embrace anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric and policy. In January, Walters pushed an emergency rule to prevent students from changing the gender listed on their school records. Last month, he also appointed Chaya Raichik, the woman behind the virulently anti-LGBTQ+ platform Libs of TikTok, to the Oklahoma State Department of Education’s advisory council overseeing the state’s school libraries, despite Raichik not even living in Oklahoma. Last year, a Tulsa elementary school received a bomb threat after Raichik shared a video with the name and school of a local librarian. In 2022, Raichik similarly targeted a teacher in Benedict’s school district for openly supporting LGBTQ+ students who weren’t accepted by their families. The teacher later resigned following harassment.

Freedom Oklahoma remembered Benedict in a February 19 social media post, writing, “We wanted to reach out to our community grappling with this horrific harm, and the grief we all share as we reflect on the growing anti-2SLGBTQ+ sentiments out youngest community members are facing more often, fueled by state law and the rhetoric around it, words and actions of our state elected officials, and the growing platforms those in power are giving to people like Chaya Raichik who continues to use her platform in a way that leads others to threaten real harm at Oklahoma kids.”

In the post, Freedom Oklahoma also shared memories of Benedict from people who knew them. They described the 16-year-old as an unfailingly kind person who “always searched for the best in people.” Benedict, who The Independent reported, is of Choctaw ancestry, is described as a lover of rock music, who often bonded with others over headbanging. A post from Pittsburgh Lesbian Correspondents says that Benedict loved The Walking Dead, playing ARK and Minecraft, drawing, and reading. During the funeral, their family said they loved to cook and would often make up their own recipes. Nex was also a straight-A student.

A previous version of this story said that Nex was a member of the Cherokee nation. They were of Choctaw ancestry. We regret the error.

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