Remembering Our Dead

TDoR 2024 / 2024 / February / 08 / Nex Benedict

Nex Benedict

Age 16 (born 11 Jan 2008)

8 Feb 2024
Owasso, Oklahoma (USA)
Beaten, then died from an overdose

Nex died the day after being beaten in a school bathroom.

Nex Benedict (they/them) was a 16-year-old nonbinary youth living in Oklahoma. They endured a reportedly vicious beating in a high school bathroom of Owasso High School, Nex died the next day in the hospital. They were a sophomore. This was February 7 and 8th. Last week, Nex was in high school. This week, they were buried.

According to KJRH three older girls were beating on the victim and her daughter in the girl’s bathroom.

“I know at one point, one of the girls was pretty much repeatedly beating their head across the floor,” she [a witness] said.

That’s when she said a teacher walked in and broke it up.

“Nex couldn’t walk to the nurses’ station on their own, and staff didn’t call the ambulance, which amazes me,” she said. The woman told 2 News the victim’s grandmother, who they primarily lived with, brought them to the hospital after the fight. She said the victim was released that evening but was brought back the next day and died.

Local police are investigating, but have not issued a statement or identified the victim. There is also no confirmation may of the details – how many students were involved in the assault, how many victims, what was the sequence of events, what’s been Nex’s school experience. We don’t know that being nonbinary is what triggered the assault.

We do know that nonbinary identity is often a factor or predictor of vulnerability to bullying and abuse.

Nex was born on January 11, 2008, in El Paso, Texas. They grew up in Owasso, Oklahoma. Nex was a sophomore at Owasso High School. According to family, Nex identified as nonbinary and used they/them pronouns.

According to the obituary, Nex was a nature lover. They enjoyed caring for cats but particularly loved their cat, Zeus. Dagny also enjoyed watching the Walking Dead, drawing, reading, and playing Ark and Minecraft. During the funeral, their family said they loved to cook and would often make up their own recipes. Dex was also a straight-A student.

No charges were filed against the three students who assaulted Nex.

Oklahoma state authorities are viewed by many as being responsible for promoting a climate of fear among young LGBTQ+ people and potentially contributing to incidents such as the one in which he was beaten:

Vigils were held across the nation in honor of Nex, who has a Choctaw heritage. The diverse crowd I witnessed at the Oklahoma City vigil was so large that I could barely hear the speakers. Nex's death, which the Oklahoma State Medical Examiners office ruled to be a suicide on March 14, must be viewed within the context of vicious attacks on LGBTQ+ youth by State Superintendent of Public Instruction Ryan Walters and Governor Kevin Stitt as well as the fifty-plus Republican legislative bills attacking LBGTQ+ rights across the country.

Since he was elected in 2019, Governor Stitt has signed laws that restrict access to public school bathrooms; ban health care for transgender people under eighteen; ban transgender girls and women from school sports; and prohibit Oklahomans from obtaining nonbinary gender markers on official documents. He also signed, as the LGTBQ+ rights group GLAAD reported, “an executive order that defunds diversity, equity, and inclusion offices and programs in state agencies, including public colleges.”

Walters has a similar record: He has depicted transgender students as a threat in schools, and approved a permanent rule change that requires schools to get state approval before altering gender markers in a student’s records. Walters has advocated for book bans and described LGBTQ+-themed books as “pornographic material.” He also appointed Chaya Raichik, the founder of anti-LGBTQ+ social media account Libs of TikTok, to the education department’s Library Media Advisory Committee.

Beyond Walters and Stitt, state representatives have also spread hateful rhetoric in recent months. State Senator Tom Woods, for example, called LGBTQ+ Oklahomans “filth” during a panel.

While digesting this it is worth noting that Nex would not even have been in the girl's bathroom if the state had inclusive bathroom policies.

Although the Oklahoma State Medical Examiners office initially ruled Nex's death to have been suicide this was reversed following an autopsy which concluded that his body had elevated levels of antidepressant and antihistimine medications, with the latter being the greater concern.

Nex Benedict

Trigger warning