On Saturday, the Owasso Police Department released footage of the 21-minute meeting between the police officer, Nex Benedict, and their mother, Susan on Feb. 7, hours after the altercation occurred at the school.
Nex Benedict, the nonbinary Oklahoma teen who died one day after a physical altercation in their high school, told a police officer that they faced three students who "came at" them during the fight, newly released body camera footage of the interview at the hospital showed.
On Saturday, the Owasso Police Department released footage of the 21-minute meeting between the officer, Nex, and their mother, Susan, on Feb. 7, hours after the altercation occurred at the school.
In the body cam video, Nex appeared conscious and alert as they sat in a hospital bed during the police interview. Nex went to the hospital for treatment after reportedly hitting their head on the ground when they were knocked down during the fight.
Nex, a sophomore at Owasso High School, recounted the events leading up to the melee. Nex said that after they and a friend entered the girl’s bathroom, a group of girls who they had never interacted before started making fun of them. Nex said they believed that the students who they fought must have been sophomores and freshmen and didn’t know their names.
“I was talking to my friends, they were talking to their friends, and we were laughing and they had said something like, ‘Why do they laugh like that?’ They were talking about us in front of us. So I went up there and poured water on them. Then all three of them came at me,” Nex told the cop.
“They came at me. They grabbed on my hair,” Nex added. “I grabbed onto them. I threw one of them into a paper towel dispenser and then they got my legs out from under me and got me on the ground.”
Nex said that the girls beat them while they were on the ground and that they eventually blacked out.
After hearing what Nex had to say, the cop said that Nex “essentially started it.”
In the video, the officer explained that even though Nex was beat in the altercation, because they dumped water over one person’s head, what they did was viewed as an assault and that all involved were both victims and suspects.
In the video, Sue Benedict told the officer she had called police to come to the hospital after the bathroom attack.
The concerned and upset mother repeatedly expressed anger that the school hadn’t done so themselves. The officer told her that she has the right to ask police to respond to the high school and he said, “the school is supposed to give us a call” and “they dropped the ball,” adding he didn't know why the school didn’t alert the cops.
Sue also said that what happened to Nex was “assault,” but said that what Nex did “was wrong.”
The calm and composed officer told Sue to call the police the next time her child was threatened. "Hopefully it doesn’t happen again," she replied.
Throughout the video, Sue refers to Nex by their birthname, but since Nex's death, Sue has issued an apology for misgendering them, specifically in the description of a GoFundMe campaign that was launched in the wake of Nex’s death. The money raised through the GoFundMe will pay for funeral expenses and go to LGBTQIA+ organizations, Sue said.
“I lost my child, the headstone will have [the] correct name of their choice," the update said. "The rest of [the] monies will go to other children dealing with the right to be who they feel they are, in Nex Benedict’s name. God bless.”
Owasso Police Department said in a lengthy Facebook post Wednesday that while an investigation into the fight that involved Nex Benedict before their death is still ongoing, “preliminary information from the medical examiner’s office is that a complete autopsy was performed and indicated that the decedent did not die as a result of trauma.
“At this time, any further comments on the cause of death are currently pending until toxicology results and other ancillary testing results are received," police said. "The official autopsy report will be available at a later date.”
Owasso Public Schools said in a statement Tuesday that school officials are continuing to "cooperate fully with the Owasso Police Department’s investigation.”
“We understand that for many, additional questions remain, however these are the facts that we are able to communicate at this juncture,” school officials said in their statement, saying there had been an increase in “speculation and misinformation surrounding the case.”
The Benedict family also said last week in a statement from their lawyer to News on 6 that they urged officials involved in the case to conduct a fair investigation and said they are investigating the case independently.
