KEYSTONE HEIGHTS – At age 44, Kevin Mobley has buried both of his sons.

Mobley’s twin sons, Austin and Dakota “DJ” Mobley, were born premature. Together, the two boys weighed less than a bag of sugar. Austin passed away six days after birth and was cremated, but DJ clung to life.
In the next 15 years, DJ grew into the impression of Kevin, a 23-year veteran paramedic-firefighter whom DJ undoubtedly admired. DJ joined the Explorers Club at the Keystone Heights Volunteer Fire Department and learned how to fight fires with his dad.
Kevin describes DJ as a gregarious boy who was popular with girls and endlessly compassionate with animals. But as DJ passed puberty, he grew increasingly distant, quiet and frustrated.
He became further isolated when an incident with an airsoft gun resulted in his dismissal from Keystone Heights Junior-Senior High. School officials moved DJ to the Clay County School District’s alternative school, Bannerman Learning Center in Green Cove Springs, where he had no friends.
In the early morning hours of February 19, 2014, Kevin discovered DJ had taken his life just a month before his 16th birthday.
The news of his death filtered through Keystone Heights Junior-Senior High. Kevin’s marriage dissolved after DJs death. The house Kevin built for his family grew quiet, uncomfortable and cold, so he took on projects to keep himself busy, away. He sold his house a year later and moved up the street.
Kevin said packing boxes of DJ’s personal affects was cathartic.
“I had to find out what I wanted to keep, what I needed to keep,” Kevin said. “I wanted him to be remembered, but I didn’t want [the new house] to be a shrine.”
All the while, Mobley experienced visions at night of what he’d seen the morning he found his son.
“It was a hard hit to the whole community,” Kevin said.
The next month, then-13-year-old Alexandria Pace, DJ’s girlfriend, died by suicide in a similar manner. The events led Clay County School District officials to believe the children had reached a suicide pact – until more reports of suicidal thoughts among students bubbled up.
After a string of suicides, attempts and deaths among students and residents during the 2013-2014 school year, Keystone Heights became the epicenter of a suicide contagion. According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, a contagion occurs when “a group of suicides or suicide attempts, or both, that occur closer together in time and space than would normally be expected in a given community.”
“What does occur is called a ‘point cluster,’ that means students die by suicide in the same geographic location in a short period of time, and it’s very well known that teenagers are the most likely group to imitate suicidal behavior,” said Scott Poland, co-director of the Suicide and Violence Prevention Office at Nova Southeastern University in Fort Lauderdale.
“We are all finding it at the middle school and high school level and the effect seems to be greater than ever before and I’ll use the analogy it’s like throwing a rock into a pond.”
Roughly 60 children were hospitalized under the Baker Act by September 2014. The fire department rescued one child in particular by cutting “something” off his neck. One child lived “because the tree branch broke,” said one official.
The number of Keystone Heights residents evaluated under the Baker Act between 2013-14 rose 43 percent from the year before. The number of residents undergoing the psychiatric examination process every year since has yet to drop.
In an open letter to the Clay County School Board, then-principal Susan Sailor verified the severity of the contagion.
“I endured seven months of unrelenting emotional trauma – 24 hours a day,” Sailor said. “Parents brought their child to my front door at 9:30 at night – parents called at midnight because they found a note or saw their child’s Facebook posts. Parents and students called over spring break because they knew of a child who was a suicide risk.”
Doctor’s diagnosed Sailor with secondary post-traumatic stress disorder and subsequent depression after the incident, states her Aug. 4 memo to the school board.
When asked to speak about her experiences, Sailor said she wasn’t ready.

School officials scramble
The school district contracted with Melissa Witmeier, director of training and community engagement with the Tallahassee-based Florida Council for Community Mental Health to help remedy the situation. She organized student counseling services and created suicide prevention programming.
Witmeier helped the district land a $70,000-plus federal grant to deploy counselors to the schools and community. Dubbed School Emergency Response to Violence, it’s the same program that provided counseling in the aftermath of the Sandy Hook mass shooting.
“Obviously, the school board was very concerned about it. We were concerned if they were getting enough resources and we did everything we could to follow up on that,” said former Keystone Heights Junior-Senior High principal Tina Bullock, who at the time, served as the District 3 school board member. “What’s hard to know is how to help. It’s hard to talk about. Unless you’ve experienced it yourself, you really don’t know what to say to make the healing begin.”
Bullock said the district sent social workers to the schools and made mental health resources available to students during holiday breaks.
Teachers and students lauded Jacksonville-based Right Path Mental Health Clinic for its success counseling those who struggled after the suicides. The clinic stationed two mental health counselors at each Keystone Heights school by the time 2013 ended. There was no counselor at the schools before Right Path offered their services.
“That was the first time I ever witnessed such a traumatic experience with young adults – first time,” said Don Jackson, Right Path’s chief executive officer. “It was a big influx of kids and parents that actually needed help during that time. It was really tough on our staff to see the emotions of the teachers and the kids that were affected by the situation.”
Several teachers struggled with their feelings and their students’ feelings to a point one teacher was Baker Acted in the spring of 2014. Another teacher lost her adult son to suicide.
Jackson said Keystone Heights felt like a fog had settled on the city.
“When you talk about that situation everything runs together, everything seems so close almost like it was a dream,” Jackson said. “It was quiet. I almost felt like it was its own world. You would hear it in peoples’ voices.”
Considering the nearest mental health center is 30 miles away from Keystone Heights, the counselors were overtaxed and had a waiting list of kids. The clinic eventually had to hire new staff to meet the demand.
The heaviest hit came to those closest to DJ and Alex.
“I’ve contemplated many times joining DJ and Alex,” said Dakota Puls, a senior at the school. “I came close to it once. Very close. I attempted it, and I was in the middle of it right before I stopped. I felt like no one understood, no one cared. That wasn’t true, but that’s how it feels. It feels as though if you die, if something happens to you, no one would care, no one would bat an eye.”
DJ was Puls’ closest friend, so his suicide put her in a state of shock. Frozen, she could not cry for a week. She said after Alex’s death, the school allowed students time away from their studies to talk in a no pressure environment and mourn their friends’ deaths. It helped, she said.
Kevin found some solace in the situation in solidarity shared in the firehouse. He said suicide “may have crossed my mind at some point,” but “I never acted on it.”

Prevention education void
In Poland’s 35 years of experience in suicide prevention and suicide contagion, a single constant emerges.
“The schools have a tendency to pretty much ignore it,” he said. “Here’s the bottom line, losing someone close to you to suicide is arguably the most complicated grief we can ever face. Unfortunately, sometimes with adolescents there are those who feel really guilty.”
Poland firmly believes Florida needs stiffer requirements when it comes to suicide prevention education.
“Florida schools have been very slow to accept any responsibility for suicide prevention, very slow to train their teachers and principals who make the decisions about training and prevention [for teachers,”] Poland said. “Ninety-five percent of them have never received any information about suicide prevention.”
Many nationally-recognized curricula are free to use. One popular program comes from the Tennessee-based nonprofit, The Jason Foundation. Nineteen states have passed The Jason Flatt Act, which requires all educators to complete two hours of youth suicide awareness and prevention training each year to renew their teaching license.
“It’s all about setting up protocols, a step by step process this teacher should do to establish this safe environment for a student,” said Brett Marciel, director of business development with The Jason Foundation. “Every school needs to have one in place, unfortunately many don’t.”
According to an April 2016 CDC study, suicide rates have increased 24 percent since 1999. In 2009, suicides accounted for 12 percent of all deaths among Florida youth aged 15-18, according to the Florida Department of Health. Poland urges school districts to be proactive with their suicide prevention instruction.
Suicide is almost always the result of untreated or undertreated mental illness, according to Poland.
“I think that mental health has been put on the back burner,” Jackson said. “I know what the school focuses on – educate, educate, educate, educate. I have to teach these kids to be ready to pass these tests, but you have to look out for the mental health part of it.”

The community heals
Puls remembers DJ and Alex in different ways. She keeps a photobook with pictures of him tucked in her driver’s side door and keeps DJ’s dog tags on her keychain, so he’s with her wherever she goes.
After DJ died, she joined the Explorer’s Club to fulfill a promise she made with DJ before his passing.
DJ and Alex have left something else with Puls, however. They’ve left an impression of compassion and understanding she attempts to share with anyone she can.
“A lot of people feel alone. They feel like no one will understand and no one will care. I think
that’s why over the years I’ve let people know. I’m here if you need me, I’m here if you need to talk,” Puls said.
Nearly three years after DJ’s death, Kevin continues to maintain the headstones of his sons’ grave. He visits a minimum of twice a week, scrubs off any algae or moss, ensures sod is laid properly and flowers dutifully arranged.
“I talk with him,” Kevin said. “I want to make sure he knows he’s never forgotten.”

Reach the National Suicide Prevention Hotline 24/7, 1(800) 273-8255.

Contact Jesse Hollett at reporter@opcfla.com