Death ends teen's lifetime of struggles

RIVERTON — Rumor had it J.J. Serassio was a narc.

Students at Riverton High School pegged the diminutive junior as an undercover cop. They stopped him in the hallways, raised their arms in the air and goaded him to search them.

Maybe classmates with whom he refused to do drugs initiated the harassment. Maybe it started because his mother is a justice court judge.

Regardless, it made the van he drove to school the target of kicking and keying or scratching. Same with a family car in the driveway at the Serassio home. Vandals sprayed "narc rat" on the skateboard ramp in his yard.

George and Darla Serassio felt threatened enough to install surveillance cameras and motion sensors outside their Riverton home.

The incidents had 16-year-old J.J., whom friends and parents described as generally unafraid in any situation, scared. "He feared for his life," said his mother.

Waiting at an intersection on her way home from work, Darla Serassio saw the blaring firetrucks turn into her driveway. Her first thought was that her husband had fallen off a ladder while putting up the surveillance cameras.

As she pulled in behind the emergency vehicles, a sheriff's deputy opened the garage, revealing her son's recently purchased red Camaro. The engine was still running.

Serassio watched through her windshield as an officer lifted J.J.'s stiff, 5-foot-tall, 125-pound body from the driver's seat. Deputies escorted Darla Serassio to her mother's house next door. They kept her inside for at least 30 agonizing minutes while police secured the area as a crime scene. Unable to take it any longer, she pushed her way to her son's body as it lay uncovered on the pavement near the garage.

"You're not going to keep me from kissing my baby goodbye," she told them.

With police yelling, "Don't touch him. Don't touch him," Darla Serassio knelt and tenderly kissed her son's lips.

In a full-page note left on the passenger seat in his best handwriting, J.J. addressed his parents, grandmother and sisters individually. He described himself as an outcast at school and at church. He signed it Joseph James Serassio. Born: June 13, 1989. Died: Nov. 15, 2005.

J.J. succumbed to carbon monoxide poisoning.

Vicious taunting hurts any teenager. But it's particularly crushing for one like Joseph James Serassio, who came into the world with autism. Autistic children are hypersensitive to even casual comments and teasing.

"That's huge for a person with autism, and that is a major stressor," said University of Utah child psychiatrist and autism expert Janet Lainhart. "The way their brain responds is much more intense than typical developing young people."

Comments