Up until the morning of January 31, Harley 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.”
After the morning of January 31, the anti-Trump memes stopped cold. On that day, a Howard County, Missouri, coroner’s jury charged Branham with involuntary manslaughter for her bullying of 17-year-old suicide victim, Kenneth Suttner. Suttner worked under Branham at a Dairy Queen in Fayette, Missouri.
According to co-workers, Branham continually abused Suttner, threw food at him, and forced him to do demeaning tasks.
Testifying in her own defense, 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.”
Branham was released on $25,000 bail. A preliminary hearing is scheduled for May. She faces up to seven years in prison. Her most recent post on Facebook was of a flower.
