An amended complaint filed Monday against alleged bully Harley Branham charges that she repeatedly called and harassed 17-year-old Kenneth Suttner, leading to his suicide. So reports the Associated Press.
Left unsaid in the AP article is whether young Mr. Suttner was a Trump supporter. It might matter. Ms. Branham was decidedly not. Up until the morning she was charged, Branham’s Facebook page catalogued her disgust with Donald Trump and his supporters. One meme Branham shared compared Trump to Hitler and another showed Holocaust victims under the headline, “Remember it didn’t start with gas chambers.”
In smaller type, that same meme reminded the reader, “It started with intolerance & hate speech and when people stopped caring, became desensitized mindlessly obedient and turned a blind eye.” Using another meme as prop, Branham identified herself as a “feminist” and “anti-fascist,” one who “supports punching nazis in the face.” She does not identify, at least, as a bully.
Branham may not have punched Suttner in the face, but according to co-workers, she continually abused Suttner, threw food at him, and forced him to do demeaning tasks. She had been his boss at the local Dairy Queen in Fayette about 100 miles east of Kansas City. Testifying in her own defense at the coroner’s inquest, Branham admitted calling Suttner an “asshole” but denied ever bullying him. “There’s a lot of people at Dairy Queen saying I was the reason,” Branham said of Suttner’s suicide, “but I don’t understand why it would be that way.”
After the morning of January 31, the anti-Trump memes stopped cold. That was the day the coroner’s jury charged the alleged bully Branham with involuntary manslaughter in Suttner’s death. Branham was released on $25,000 bail. She faces up to seven years in prison. Her most recent post on Facebook, February 3, was of a flower.
On Monday, special prosecutor April Wilson argued that Branham’s relentless harassment of Sutter caused him “emotional distress,” eventually leading to the suicide. Wilson added two counts each of aggravated stalking, third-degree assault and harassment. Ms. Branham’s preliminary hearing is scheduled for November 29 at the Howard County Courthouse.
