Train kills student

64 Comments

1. This is why I pulled my 2 kids out of PALY. There aren’t words. These are children. The district needs to do better. This blood is on their hands.

   • I disagree to an extent. PAUSD needs to provide counseling, etc to students, but I put most of the blame on pressures instilled by parents. My kids went to Gunn and the kids have so much anxiety about grades and getting into Ivy league schools. They looked down on and made fun of kids that wanted to go to Community college or trade schools. Where does that come from? I attended meetings at the middle schools when my kids were in 5th grade to introduce parents to the school leadership and curriculum and SO many parents were obsessed with which math track would get their kids into Harvard or Stanford. Their kids were in 5th grade for God’s sake!! These kids have school pressures, they go to tutoring, are pressured into being excellent musicians and athletes. All at the same time. Parents need to do better.

     • It looks like this is the third kid going through a sex change to commit suicide in the past year. Instead of talking about grade seps, let’s deal with the problem of gender affirming surgery in minors. The doctors need to be held accountable.

       • It’s extremely unlikely that any of these kids HAD gender affirming surgery, so it’s doubtful that there’s a “problem of gender affirming surgery in minors”. It’s generally not available until they are 18, and they are required to have been on hormone therapy for at least a year prior to any surgery. At 15, this girl may or may not have even been on hormone therapy – doctors often want kids to wait till they are 16.

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         • [Post Removed — Terms of Use violation. We don’t have any proof of the claims made by the commenter.]

           • Is this true? I can’t find anything on Reddit. If it’s true, please provide proof, so that the community can have an honest discussion and figure out what is actually going on and solve the problem. If not, please be considerate and let us know it’s not. The family and community are already hurting enough.

         • Hormones are more powerful than surgery affecting mood and all thoughts. Kids should not be taking these drugs.

       • Julia,

         Would you be willing to talk about this? Im a student journalist at PALY.

         If so please respond with contact info.

         • Paly Student- Let me know if you want to talk about this issue. I’m easy to find. I’ve been in your school paper multiple times.

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       • I have seen quite a few comments in that vein, but what do they actually want to express?

         – That transitioning in itself actually makes you suicidal? That’s quite far fetched, don’t you think so? Actually, the contrary seems more likely.
         – That transitioning makes you become a predictable target of attacks? Well, that would say a lot about our culture, right? And I’m quite sure I would rather try to support my child through this than let it deny who they are.

         • WH, you really refer to your kids as “it”? If you don’t want to reveal their gender, why not use the phrase “he or she”? You could be your child’s own worst enemy.

           • “It” refers to our culture, not the commenter’s child.

       • Julia, Are you serious? Your comment is unbelievably unnecessary and insensitive. A beautiful child is dead and you want to barf your political Kool-Aid in the comment section. I can assure you that you don’t know what you’re talking about.

         • Erin is so upset, but all Julia said was the following (dumbed down so the low IQ people will understand):

           1. Summer Devi Mehta was the third high schooler in the past year to take their own life by jumping in front of a train. That’s true.

           2. Summer, like the other two, were transexual. That is also true.

           3. Julia says the focus should be on gender affirming surgery in minors. That’s her opinion. In America, you’re entitled to your opinion. Look up First Amendment.

           4. Where are the doctors who were treating these children? How do they explain this? Julia wants the doctors to be held accountable.

           Makes sense. We don’t want this happening again.

           • 1 and 2 are facts that are true, I will give you that.

             3… Sure. That’s her opinion, she has a right to post it on the internet. However, it just adds unnecessary distress to an already distressing situation so arguably maybe it wasn’t in good taste to post it.

             4 is just entirely irrelevant. What should these doctors be held accountable for? What do the doctors need to explain? The doctors are not the people responsible for her death, the people responsible are people invalidating her identity by calling her “confused” or physically attacking her (which did happen).

             • “Anonymous” (above) says the doctors shouldn’t be held responsible. But as it was revealed in the Fox Varian trial in New York, the doctors talked a 16-year-old into having a mastectomy as part of a series of surgeries to change her sex from female to male. She later regretted the decision, sued and won a $2 million verdict, according to the New York Times. Those doctors were held to account, so why not the ones around here who are talking our kids into “gender affirming” surgery? If a doctor removes the wrong leg from a patient, shouldn’t that doctor face a malpractice suit? Cases where kids kill themselves out of regret for having a sex change procedure fall into the malpractice category too. At the very least, our police department should have a detective interview these doctors to see if criminal charges are warranted.

               • [Post removed — please don’t use strawman arguments. You misstated what a previous commenter said, and then criticized that commenter for saying something they didn’t say.]

           • Transexual is an outdated term, now a slur. I’m sure you don’t want to be using slurs.

     • Agreed, it is insane the pressure parents put on their kids to do well, do beyond well. I have been an educator on the Peninsula for 25+ years, and it has gotten much worse. Isn’t raising a happy, well-adjusted, kind, compassionate human being more important? Get your priorities in order,
       folks, you only have one chance with your kids.

       • You are out of your l mind if you think its all parents – my son got depressed and missed a concert recital and the other kids were all over him like Hyenas on a Bunny Rabbit for automatically dropping his grade from “A” to a “B” … Students are the WORST on their peers!

         • But that’s my point. Why were the kids pressuring him like that? Where did they learn that type of competition and ridicule from? I didn’t say that all kids that struggle have demanding parents.

     • Agreed. You can blame the school all you want but it comes from the home too. Are parents seeing the signs, How do they guide their children through emotional challenges at school? It’s a partnership and I see too many parents checked out from what’s going on in school. We all need to do better, not just the schools.

2. Very, very sad. When will it end?

3. Grade separation won’t prevent suicides. It may aid the smoother flow of traffic.

   Rest in peace, young person. Wish this hadn’t happened.

   • Physical barriers, such as grade separations, stop suicides. Have we ever had a suicide at Oregon Expressway and the tracks? Nope.

     What I’d like to know is why has our city council failed to make any progress on grade separations in the 20+ years we’ve been talking about this? We’ve passed two taxes for this — and nothing has happened! Our council needs to be recalled from office, and the city manager and his aides need to be replaced. The job isn’t getting done.

     • Talk to the Residentialists. They fight every slight change in the train tracks in Palo Alto for decades.

     • I’m offended by how our town’s leadership deals with these deaths. They don’t want anyone to talk about it, and to go along as if nothing is happening. Our school board and city council has had years to deal with this, and the problem continues.

     • Well said. Giving kids time to think will save their lives and likewise putting a train in front of will not. People who think otherwise and cannot cross elsewhere are callous and ignorant.

     • Grade separations will prevent suicides by stopping a person from being run over by a train, but they won’t prevent the person from killing themselves. A person will simply find another means, like jumping from an overpass onto a freeway (a common method in Los Angeles), or maybe a drug overdose. There are many ways one can kill oneself.

     • Part of the problem – maybe the biggest problem – is neighbors voting against a graded separation because they are worried about property values and “disturbances” from construction. It’s atrocious and disgusting.

4. On Reddit there’s what’s described as a suicide note, where the victim says principal Brent Klein should be fired. She also lists the reasons why she took her own life. It’s quite sad and it scorches Paly … things that will never get addressed. What a tragedy that we, as a community, will ignore this cry for help.

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7. Railroad should be relocated!!!!!! Money should be spent to railroad relocation right now.

8. RIP.
   Railroad should be relocated!! Our tax dollar should be spent for something like this.

9. This happened today, Tuesday the third.

10. palo alto school average SAT score of 1390-1420, US average SAT score 1030

11. Mental health is a very big concern for all Bay Area schools. Not every parent can afford private therapy. Or sadly, at times they are not even aware of the mental health dangers their child may be facing. Hug your children tight and let them know they are loved and supported no matter what.

12. Parents should certainly avoid putting too much pressure on their children to compete, but the entire community should take heart that most Palo Alto students are doing very well compared with the state and national average. Also, these suicides may not be all about academic pressures. There could be other factors, including status and social issues, that can be toxic for kids and are very hard to combat.

13. It is not the district’s fault but the parents and the culture. These students are pressured into feeling they are supposed to be the top of everything.

14. Need to tunnel the trains. No more excuses.

    • The trains aren’t the issue. The issue is the lack of security around them. Having people posted to prevent people from walking out to the tracks would be infinitely more helpful than spending billions of dollars to change the railway.

15. Well clearly something is not going right. I think it’s an all hands on deck situation. Staff, parents and students. PALY and Gunn are pressure cookers and yes it starts earlier. I too observed at Green middle school in the causal welcome to Middle school meeting and while I was thinking ok lockers, lunch, wow kids all grew over the summer etc…yet these middle school parents were grilling staff about math. No joke, at least 15 questions about math, all hard core and in the most assertive tones. All questions were definitely challenging staff about whether or not the school would cut it. *** This was not an academic or math meeting!??!! I was shocked. My child went to a Palo Alto elementary school which had a much more easy going whole child culture.

    I also hear that current Paly students talk about colleges all the time at lunch and the culture is to generally make fun of non elite yet very good schools like northeastern. Even in regular band the well meaning teacher kept asking my kid to take private lessons. My kid was competent, but was taught at a non Palo Alto middle school and it was a difficult instrument, but see, message always the same, the standards are exacting everywhere at PALY. This is not to say that I haven’t met many kind teachers at PALY but somehow this culture feedback system has been created.

    My vote was to stay out of Palo Alto high schools but I got outvoted. Los Gatos for example has a much healthier culture, not perfect of course (less diverse), but it has many more levels of academics and a history of hiring excellent teachers. Paly seems to be lacking in offering a good middle or even advanced middle level. Many non advanced or next level way too easy for many.

    So many say college is easy after Paly. This is backwards isn’t it? Kids are not emotionally equipped to handle that kind of academic pressure at 14-18.

    Teaching matters a lot at Los gatos hs. Example their now retired physics teacher was as on national physics teachers board and taught Bay Area teachers including one from Stanford on line high school at weekend teacher seminars.

    ***re math norms. In sixth grade at Greene (then called fisher) at that time had all students do their best at fifty Einstein questions a month. Extra work but everyone tired to do them. My kid was very smart but cried when he only got 35 right.. turns out most kids were lucky to get 10 or 15 questions right. Usually there were at least 3 questions vast majority math adept parents couldn’t figure out. I guess there are students that thrive in that kind of environment. But why stress the heck out of the other 80 percent of kids? To please demanding parents?

    I believe parents, kids and staff are all part of the culture.
    My thoughts anyways.

16. I was unable to edit above. Note I have met many kind and thoughtful PALY teachers. But it seems like all involved need to take steps to shift this culture, parents and students included.

    It is a common saying that PALY students find college easy. That’s a relief but isn’t this backwards?! Teens 14-18 clearly don’t had the emotional maturity to handle the academic pressure that most kids don’t deal until being young adults 18-22. And a least by college some sorting of interests and standards has happened.

    And I agree with others train track accessibility doesn’t help. We never hear oh kid seriously injured in hospital. That is brutally hard to type. But the train is unforgiving.

17. If student mental health is so important to the PAUSD administration I’d love to know why the Student Wellness Committee meets secretly. Why are the virtual meetings not publicly advertised, so that anyone in the community can attend and why are the school board committee members not named, so that they can be contacted for questions and comments?

18. I read the the note on Reddit. Please Google it and read. It clearly shows that a lot of assumptions we all made are off.

    The person was clearly deeply unhappy about their life, and did this very intentionally. Yes, the crossing likely made it easier, but it just doesn’t seem like the root cause.

    Neither does it seem like pushy parents. It just does not come across as someone who was forced to do too much by parents. The person genuinely seems to have liked the activities they were part of. And – please hold reflexive cancel mentality for a second and try to solve a life and death problem in an institution where your child goes – stereotypical, crazy, overachieving pushy parents are just not likely to be supportive of their child going trans. They would have pushed against that…

    So we have to think outside of the usual arguments that been circulating for 20 years – but have not resolved the issue.

    The person was clearly very depressed over the previous suicide of their best friend. They were unhappy with the school. And they were generally unhappy with their life.

    A lot – maybe most? – teenagers are unhappy with their school and life at some point. Please see endless movies and books… But they generally don’t resort to such extreme steps. And not so many at one institution.

    I don’t have a solution. But it’s become clear that the solutions, people and institutions that have been tried so far do not work. The were likely done with best intentions, best effort and by the best people. But too many lives have been lost and this is not stopping.

    We need a different direction. New solutions and new people at all levels – school administration, district administration, counseling and the school board.

    • Yeah the train is not the issue here.

      The train was just the easiest way to go through with it

    • Research indicates – over and over – that restricting access to highly lethal means is associated with reductions in suicide deaths among adolescents. For example, a long‑term, population‑level study of U.S. youth aged 14–17 found that child access prevention (CAP) laws—which require firearms to be stored so that children and teens cannot easily access them—were linked with an ≈8 % decrease in overall suicide rates in that age group, with specifically lower firearm suicides in states that had these laws in place compared with what would have been expected without them. Supporting this, research modeling safe firearm storage practices (such as locking and unloading guns in homes with youth) suggests that such practices could significantly reduce youth firearm suicide deaths. More broadly, systematic reviews of “means restriction” interventions internationally (such as removing highly toxic pesticides or reducing access to other lethal methods) show that when access to a common, lethal method is restricted, suicide deaths by that method fall and there is not a compensatory increase in other methods, indicating a true net reduction in mortality. These findings align with public health guidance that limiting access to lethal means gives people in acute crisis more time for the moment to pass or for help to intervene, which can prevent fatal outcomes. 

19. It starts at home. Stay connected with your children. Keep the door open, ask questions, listen without judgment, and be the safe place they can always come to.

    Notice the small signs when something feels off. Growing up and school can be overwhelming, and they need to know they’re not alone. Lead with love, support, and care so their emotional and mental well-being always comes first.

    • It won’t be long until we hear the voices for censorship in our community. The ones who say, “Oh you shouldn’t print her name …” When you ask why, they make up a reason like “It will hurt the family’s feelings.” But here’s the real reason: If Palo Alto becomes known as a suicide pit for youth, nobody will want to move here and the price of homes will nosedive.

20. Caltrain and other agencies are quick to say that we should be quiet about these student suicides because of the contagion effect——that talking about one suicide will cause another one.

    Well, okay. If that’s true, when was the suicide that triggered Monday’s death? The last one was in November, and it involved a 47-year-old man, not a student. Before that, the last student suicide was in August.

    Are you telling me Summer waited six months to act on this stimulus? That’s ridiculous. She certainly doesn’t say that in her suicide note.

    We, as a community, should have a full-throated debate over how to prevent these suicides. This copycat/secrecy argument is just an attempt by the politicians hush everyone up, to avoid accountability.

21. Need to tunnel the trains. No more excuses.

22. What is the correlation between suicide rates at Gunn/Paly over the past 25 years with the number of international families moving into Palo Alto?

23. I’ve been in this community a very long time and never heard of students jumping in front of trains until the District changed the grade level programs. Maybe it’s time to put the 6th grade back at the elementary level and bring back a 7-9 junior high? Students are pampered too much and the transition from “middle school” to high school is too abrupt with teaming and grade level as a emphasis at the middle school rather than a department and high school expectations as a focus. I’m certainly not an expert but maybe our earlier educated administrators from Stanford actually knew what worked?

24. This hypercompetitive mentality in PAUSD really needs to end. I’ve been out of this system for over 5 years, but this tar pit remains, but it’s not a tar pit in the traditional sense as it follows students well after they graduate. Enough with the empty platitudes; this culture is corrosive.

25. The City should construct an overpass with elevator access and take action now.
    Superintendent, City Council members, and Mayor—please prioritize this issue. Delaying action puts our children and community at risk. Immediate steps are needed to improve safety near the railroad. Really, How many more children must be harmed before meaningful action is taken?

    If the railroad cannot be relocated, an overpass with elevators should be provided to prevent pedestrians from waiting near active tracks, reducing safety risks for individuals experiencing mental health challenges.

    Requiring people to wait near active train tracks can be especially dangerous for individuals going through severe emotional or mental health crises.

26. “Not the problem” says it’s extremely unlikely that any of these kids HAD gender affirming surgery. How do we know? Did “Not the problem” have access to their confidential medical records? I think not. We do know that there was a landmark jury verdict in New York State last week involving a woman who, when she was 16, was talked into having her breasts removed because she was convinced that she should transition to male. A few years later she realized that her sex change was a mistake — that the psychologist and surgeon talked her into that surgery. She sued and a jury agreed with her. They ordered the doctors to pay her $2 million. Again, that was for surgery that occurred when she was 16. So it is possible that such surgery is occurring here. And when these sexually confused teens realize they’ve made a mistake (and Summer said as much in her suicide note) they become suicidal. Instead of talking about grade separations or the train, we should be talking about how the last three high schoolers who committed suicide-by-train in this town were transsexual. I realize the transsexual community in SF will be angry that we’re discussing this. They’ll pull strings and get the news media pretend this isn’t a factor. But this is a needless tragedy. I hope the police are investigating these deaths.

27. Hi everyone,
    As a paly student myself I have noticed that a lot of my friends have said that there parents put a lot of pressure on them. Around now is the time where you sign up for classes and students are jugging others for not taking ass many ap classes as them. Every year I have been at paly a kid sadly ends there own life. It affects everyone at paly, today multiple classes cancelled what they have planned for the day and many kids could not focus during class. Overall it is very sad what happend at paly yesterday and to anyone who is thinking of doing the same please don’t. There’s always a person to help you.
    Love,
    Paly student

28. I do not agree the practice by the journalist to publish the full names of all the unfortunate kids we have lost in the past few years. Why the revealation, it’s totally unnecessary and all that it serves is to add more pains to their family and beloved ones.

    I strongly demand the website to mask their names.

    • If the family wants anonymity, why did they put up a webpage giving so many details about Summer’s life and photographs? You can find it by Googling “In Honor of Summer Devi Mehta” and “The Trevor Project.” TG, I doubt you’re representing her family or have even talked to them. Instead of pretending to be a proxy for the family, consider making a donation in her name.

29. It won’t be long until we hear the voices for censorship in our community. The ones who say, “Oh you shouldn’t print her name …” When you ask why, they make up a reason like “It will hurt the family’s feelings.” But here’s the real reason: If Palo Alto becomes known as a suicide pit for youth, nobody will want to move here and the price of homes will nosedive.

    • At one time, Palo Alto was known for its book burnings. In the 20s and 30s, if there was a book residents didn’t like, they’d take it out of the library and set it on fire in the middle of the street. The City Council also had a film committee that would screen movies before they could be shown in the city’s theaters. I guess that urge is still present today in the community.

30. The Superintendent should be held accountable for his leadership. He has served in this role for many years, yet during his tenure, student suicides and serious safety concerns have continued. Academic success in Palo Alto is driven primarily by students, families, and teachers—not by district leadership at all. What has he been done during his term???

    What is most troubling is his past opposition to closing the Churchill railroad crossing, despite its well-documented safety risks. Over the last decade, many students have taken their lives. Student safety should always come before traffic convenience.

    The Superintendent himself acknowledged this position in a February 5 letter, stating:

    “In the past, I have opposed closing the Churchill crossing because of the significant traffic it serves, including school buses and district maintenance vehicles.”

    This statement is deeply disappointing. School buses and maintenance access should never outweigh the lives and safety of students. Leadership requires prioritizing students first, listening to the community, and taking decisive action to prevent further tragedies. That leadership has been missing. He should be fired.

31. If the crossing is closed, how many people will die because ambulances get stuck in traffic and can’t take patients to hospitals in time? How many more accidents and road rage incidents will happen? You can’t just randomly insist on one thing without thinking of the full consequences. And as other people have pointed out, it doesn’t change why this person wanted to take this extreme step.

    We do need to holistically look at what is going wrong with this institution. And challenge some of our previous assumptions. Are we supporting kids properly when they need it? And – are we not properly preparing our children on how to deal with challenges?

    Are we not teaching our kids that life is messy. That things go up and down, and it’s not the end of the world.

    And are we not teaching our kids that you can talk things through? You can say difficult things and others can say difficult things. It can feel uncomfortable, but the open discussion leads to better outcomes than suppressing things?

    I know there has been this advise that talking about suicides can lead to copycats. But that has clearly not worked. Maybe just because the discussion was suppressed doesn’t mean that everybody doesn’t know? Or that they were not affected. Maybe it just means that they end up not knowing why it happened and how to process? And we all make different assumptions about the cause and never solve the problem?

    The real cause might be counterintuitive. And knowing it might hurt by challenging things we had assumed or wanted to be true.

    But isn’t it time to try? Instead of suppressing discussion, maybe let’s have a ceremony for the full school, honor the person, let kids come up and express what’s on their mind. Tell them that life is messy but they can handle it.

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