CHIMACUM — Grief counselors were available for Chimacum High School students Thursday after a popular ninth-grade student committed suicide Wednesday.
Nathan Paulson, 14, a ninth-grader at Chimacum High School, shot himself in the head between 4 p.m. and 5 p.m. at his home on Center Road, said Jefferson County Chief Civil Deputy Prosecuting Attorney David Alvarez, who is serving as county coroner.
Paulson, who had a 4.0 grade-point average, played the tuba in the band and was well-regarded by all his contemporaries, Principal Whitney Meissner said.
“I was talking to his friends, and they said that he was very quiet but had a great sense of humor,” she said. “They all thought he was going to do amazing things with his life because he was so smart.”
Grief counselors also will be on campus today, Meissner said.
Jefferson County Sheriff Tony Hernandez, who investigated the shooting Wednesday, said the boy died at his home and confirmed the wound was self-inflicted.
His father discovered him, Alvarez said.
This was the third tragedy the district faced this school year.
In November, Tony Meissner, Whitney Meissner’s husband, was killed in an early morning traffic accident on state Highway 104.
In February, Chimacum School Board member Jodi Cossell died.
In those cases, all at the school banded together and dealt with a collective grief.
Death by suicide, said Superintendent Craig Downs, is a little different.
‘Hard to understand’
“Suicide is hard for us to understand,” he said. “The kids are really upset, and they all react differently. Some are emotional, and others are quiet.”
Downs said the suicide shocked students because Paulson appeared to have so much going for him.
“When this happens, you always ask yourself if there were signs that you missed,” he said. “But in this case, there weren’t any signs, and we don’t want kids to beat themselves up because they think they missed the signs.”
The school district Thursday was sending home with each student a packet of information, which lists 12 warning signs that could precede a suicidal action. These include making threats, sudden changes in behavior or appearance and death-oriented notes or drawings.
The Chimacum Schools campus has about 1,100 students, attending classes from kindergarten through 12th grade.
“I’ve often thought that we are not just a school, we are more like a family,” Meissner said. “We support each other and do what it takes to get through a tragedy, but being like a family means that we feel the loss more deeply.”
“We’ve never had a year like this,” Meissner said. “The best way to pay tribute to people who are gone is to remember that life is worth living.”
Chimacum is not the only school on the North Olympic Peninsula to have suffered the shock of a suicide this year.
In Port Angeles, two high school students have died of self-inflicted harm.
Port Angeles High School junior Jacob Bird died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound in late January. His father came forward and publicly identified his son and the circumstances of Bird’s death in the hopes that parents and others could prevent further suicides.
A 15-year-old Port Angeles High School student, whose name Port Angeles police did not release because she was a minor, was found hanged in a creek ravine in early February.
Authorities characterized the hanging as a suicide.
Services for Paulson are pending and will be announced by Kosec Funeral Home in Port Townsend.
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Jefferson County Reporter Charlie Bermant can be reached at 360-385-2335 or charlie.bermant@peninsuladailynews.com.
