Mother alleges her teen committed suicide due to COVID isolation, sues Illinois Governor

Trevor Till was a promising student-athlete at Seneca High School. According to his mother Lisa Moore, Trevor was hoping to go to the state-championships to compete in pole-vaulting. Track season was cut short for Trevor due to the coronavirus pandemic and Moore believes "100 percent" that the lockdown "changed Trevor from who he was to the person that did this," according to the Faulkner Focus.

The parents of three other student-athletes joined Moore in suing Governor Pritzker citing that their children are suffering severe emotional and physical harm because of the restrictions, according to the Chicago Sun Times. Their winter sports season was cancelled. The lawsuit claims that Pritzker’s cancellation "is an unconstitutional violation of the Plaintiffs’ right to equal protection under the Constitution of the State of Illinois."

"Trevor was devastated that he didn’t have his senior year track and pole vaulting season" and that "the final blow was when winter sports were cancelled," the lawsuit reported. It also noted that Trevor’s suicide was "a proximate cause of which was Governor Pritzker’s restrictions on high school sports programs."

"He's a teenage boy. They need their friends. They need the interaction. They need the socialization," she added, "He was that student in the classroom that raised his hand, got the conversations going. Doing that from Zoom, doing that from his bedroom, it was not the same feeling for him," Moore said.

Moore told Faulkner Focus, "This is a clear violation of the equal protection rights of high school students in Illinois. I think there's something amiss here that high school students have been treated and discriminated against, which is why we filed this.” The suit was filed last month by attorney, Laura Grochocki, in LaSalle County Circuit Court.