Parents Speak Out After Stillwater Teen’s Suicide

STILLWATER, MN — A community was shaken after a teenager from Stillwater died by suicide earlier this year. Colin Morrissey was 14 years old when he decided to take his own life on April 11, 2017. He would have been going into 10th grade this fall.

Morrissey's obituary stated that he was "a perpetually kind, intentionally quirky boy" and that he took his life "in a bad moment in time."

Morrissey's parents are now fighting against the stigma of teen suicide and are encouraging more people to talk about it before it's too late. “In that moment of being alone he made a decision that he can’t take back," Colin’s father, Larry Morrissey, told WCCO:

His mom, Tamara, reads the notes many kids left on his locker.

“Colin we’ll miss you. You and your jokes will always be in our hearts,” she reads. “We will miss everything about you.”

They are the pages of a scrapbook no parent should ever have to see.

“Some will say, ‘Oh, good will come of this.’ And good may, but not nearly as much good as we would have gotten if Colin had lived his life,” Tamara said.

Colin was known for the sense of humor as colorful as the bracelets he proudly wore, for his quiet kindness and for the void he filled as the baby of this family of five.

Read much more at WCCO.

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