On March 13, the Oklahoma Medical Examiner’s office released part of a report concluding that Nex Benedict’s death on Feburary 8 was a suicide -- an overdose caused by a combination of diphenhydramine (commonly known as Benadryl) and fluoxetine (commonly known as Prozac), Vox reports. A national conversation has focused for the past month on the cause of death of the 16-year-old transgender/nonbinary student, who died the morning after being badly beaten by three classmates, his head was slammed against a restroom floor, knocking him unconscious.
Nex told his family he was nonbinary and used they/them pronouns; at school, at during an altercation at Owasso High School, he also used he/him pronouns and told a former partner that he was trans. The incident has also brought increased scrutiny of Benedict’s school district from the U.S. Department of Education, which announced on March 1 that its Office of Civil Rights had opened an investigation into whether the school violated Benedict’s nondiscrimination rights under Title IX, which protects from gender-based discrimination.