RIDGE FARM, Ill. — A line of cars rolled slowly past Ridge Farm Elementary School on Wednesday and into Crown Hill Cemetery for the burial of 10-year-old Ashlynn Conner.
Many of Ashlynn's classmates stood clutching powder-blue balloons beside her casket. Tugging against tiny hands in a chilly afternoon breeze, each balloon carried a note to the fifth-grader, who was found dead Friday in an apparent suicide her loved ones say was prompted by years of bullying by schoolmates and neighborhood children.
The details of the fifth-grader's death have thrust this east-central Illinois hamlet into the national spotlight — and generated local debate — over how best to protect children from schoolyard taunting that goes too far.
"My note says, 'I don't think you were mean, you were a really good person,'" said Olivia Tucker, 11, whose mother used to baby-sit Ashlynn before the Tuckers moved to nearby Danville.
"I think it was really mean, what happened to (Ashlynn)," Olivia said. "I thought maybe we could write her a little note."
With no stoplight and nary a church large enough to hold the 300-plus mourners, Ridge Farm, population 900, is among the smallest of a string of towns among the fields of corn stubble and fallow soybeans along Illinois Highway 150.
Ashlynn's death has been the talk of the town, not the least because her family has said her death came after she repeatedly told her teachers about taunting from girls at school.
Kevin Tate, superintendent of Georgetown-Ridge Farm Unit 4, wouldn't comment on allegations of bullying, deferring to the police investigation.
"We've been very cooperative (with police). We're waiting to see what they say," he said.
Tate said counselors were provided for children and staff throughout the district of about 1,150 students. Ashlynn was one of 23 children in her fifth-grade class at Ridge Farm Elementary, where she was on the honor roll, Tate said. Her sister is an eighth-grader in the district.
Her death has "devastated" the community, said Tate, who lives two doors from Ashlynn's family. Classes at the school were canceled Wednesday so students and staff could attend the funeral.
Authorities said Ashlynn's sister found the girl unresponsive Friday night, hanging by a knitted scarf from the rod in her bedroom closet.
A day earlier, Ashlynn returned home in tears after being taunted by girls at school and asked to be pulled out of classes to be home-schooled, family said. Her mother told her that she they would meet with the school principal Monday.
Vermilion County Coroner Peggy Johnson said Ashlynn died of strangulation, but she cannot determine whether the death was a suicide until the sheriff's investigation is done and her office has completed further tests.
A Tribune reporter who visited Vermilion County Sheriff Patrick Hartshorn's office Wednesday was told the sheriff would not be available, and numerous phone calls were not returned.
Hartshorn told a local newspaper that investigators are treating the case as a suicide and continue to investigate the family's allegations of bullying.
"We've interviewed the friends supposedly involved in it," Hartshorn told the Danville Commercial-News in a story published Monday. "We haven't uncovered anything so severe that it would result in someone taking their own life."
Ashlynn had become a target for some of her classmates years ago, said 19-year-old cousin Heidi Paree. Paree points to a time when Ashlynn had gotten a short haircut, around the time tryouts began for cheerleading at youth football games.
"They said she looked like a boy, 'Who's that boy over there?' That kind of thing," Paree said. "It really upset her."
[REST IN PEACE BABY GIRL THIS WORLD IS EVIL SOMEONE SHOULD HAVE TAUGHT U THAT SO U COULD HAVE KNWN HOW 2 DEAL WITH IT]
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