‘We Must Hold Even More Tightly To Each Other’: School Reacts To Student’s Suicide

CHARLOTTE, NC -- Providence Day High School community is mourning one of its own after the body of student Nathan Ward Kocmond, 16, was discovered in Montgomery County Friday. The death of the Charlotte teen, who had been missing since Monday afternoon, was a result of suicide, according to authorities.

“Providence Day is a caring and compassionate community; one where we lean on and depend upon one another,” the school said on its Facebook page Saturday. “Just as we were bound together in our hope that Nathan Kocmond would come home, we must hold even more tightly to each other as we mourn his death.”

Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police asked for the public’s help in finding Kocmond last week after he went missing from his home in the 7000 block of Kennington Court on the evening of Oct. 9. (Get Patch real-time email alerts for the latest news in Charlotte — or other neighborhoods. And iPhone users: Check out Patch's new app.)

His parents told media outlets the Providence Day junior missed a Boy Scout meeting that evening and that his cell phone had been turned off.

“He told his sister that he wanted to visit with some of his friends beforehand, and so he left,” Jon Kocmond, Nathan’s father, told WBTV. “He never met up with his friends that night and he never went to Boy Scouts. When we realized that later in the evening, we contacted his friends, who knew nothing of this, so we contacted the police.”

About six weeks before he went missing, Kocmond received a concussion while playing football and had showed signs of depression, his parents told the station. "We think he's hiding," the teen’s father said. "He's not using his phone. He deleted his social media. We think he's retreating from any relationships that he's had.”

His parent’s launched a website, offered a $5,000 reward for information on his location and a GoFundMe fundraising campaign was launched to help increase that amount and help pay for private investigators. As of Saturday, that campaign had raised $43,197.

The search for Kocmond came to an end Friday afternoon when a hiker in Uwharrie National Forest, which is about 60 miles northeast of Charlotte, found his body, The Charlotte Observer reported.

Now, those donations will be used “to reward those individuals involved in the search and to provide a memorial celebrating Nathan's life,” his family said on the GoFundMe page.

Photo courtesy of Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department