Teen takes her own life after nude shower video leaks on Snapchat

A tragic reminder of the dangers of social media. Tovonna Holton, from Tampa, Florida, died by suicide following a video of her showering, allegedly filmed by friends on Snapchat without her permission, leaked online. According to family members, acquaintances of the 15-year-old uploaded the content taken unbeknownst to Tovonna to the popular app Snapchat hours before she was found dead at her family home. In an interview with WFLA-TV, mum Levon Holton-Teamer pieced together the traumatic event of finding her daughter.

"I couldn’t get in the bathroom. "The bathroom light was off so I tried to get in and I looked down and I saw the puddle of blood. I tried to apply the pressure, the pressure to her head. I tried to save her."

Tovanna stole a gun from her mother's handbag to end her own life. Levon went on to recount the last conversation she had with her daughter:

"Tovonna would say, ‘Mommy, I owe them; I owe them.’ I said, ‘What do you mean you owe them?’ I couldn’t understand what was wrong."

The teen's family took to social media to look for answers. Also speaking to the station, Angel Scott, the teenager's aunt explained how she discovered bullies had uploaded the footage online. Angel told WFLA-TV:

“I just said, ‘If anybody knows anything, what happened? Have you heard of anything? Do you know who these kids are who have the pictures?’” "I thought it was just pictures and then the kids started inboxing me. "Everybody was out there talking about her and calling her names and they said it went up on social media, Snapchat. I’d never heard of that before about three-something that afternoon. "I want [the bullies] to pay, to feel what we feeling, even if their child is convicted or in trouble, they can go visit their child."

According to The Daily Beast, Tovanna's friends have made claims against her boyfriend, which were dispelled by the Pasco County Sheriff’s Office spokesperson.