Had I known. Had I known. Had I known.
That phrase has been agonizingly stuck in Tammy Poirier’s head since October 16, 2023. That day, her 15-year-old son Owen, a star on the local high-school soccer team, was kicked out of school by the superintendent and principal for allegedly touching a 16-year-old girl’s crotch on a school bus three days earlier.
“I didn’t do this,” Owen said when his parents arrived at school to pick him up. All they knew was that their son had been accused and suspended that morning, and that he was facing a criminal investigation.
Owen’s parents drove him home. In the car, he expressed the fear of letting his soccer team down because he wouldn’t be allowed to play in the state championships that week. That afternoon, he died by suicide.
Had I known. Had I known. Had I known.
Tammy Poirier said it again and again while we sat in her husband Chad’s office at the family’s heating, ventilation, and air-conditioning business in upstate New York. Owen’s suicide happened just outside the building. As she spoke, tears fell from her cheeks and landed on her jeans.
