Parents of 11-Year-Old Who Committed Suicide Believe Social Isolation Contributed

Landon Fuller’s parents believe social isolation due to the coronavirus pandemic contributed to the suicidal thoughts leading to his death.

“Landon was very energetic and outgoing,” Landon’s mother Katrina Fuller told host Colt Balok during an appearance on The Colt Balok Show. “He was smart and funny, and he wanted to be everybody’s friend, and he wanted to help people. He loved sports, and he loved his family, and he loved his dog.”

The 11-year-old’s parents were guests on the show to talk about the sudden loss of their son, and to remember his life. “He was a curious, curious kid,” Landon’s father, James, added. “He always wanted to know about everything. He always questioned everything.”

But despite showing no apparent signs of struggle, Landon Fuller rode to a nearby field in April and took his own life. The only answers left to his grieving parents come from entries in his journal describing thoughts of suicide. Even so, one question still looms large in their minds.

“I think the big question we all have is why, and we will never know the reason why,” said Katrina:

The only thing that I was able to find was in his journal was that he had wrote that he was going mad from staying at home all the time and that he just wanted to be able to go to school and play outside with his friends. So that was the only thing that I can imagine what was going through his head at that time. If I had read that before, I wouldn’t have thought that he was planning on taking his own life because I think we’re all feeling a little crazy right now.

The Fullers have taken the opportunity to urge parents to talk to their children about their feelings — even if they seem fine. “I hope his story can at least save at least one life. If so, then his death wasn’t in vain,” Katrina said. Landon is one of many casualties of the psychological toll taken by the global pandemic.

“We’re seeing, sadly, far greater suicides now than we are deaths from COVID,” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Robert Redfield said in a July 14 interview. “We’re seeing far greater deaths from drug overdose that are above the excess that we had as background than we are seeing the deaths from COVID.”