Death of Hamed Nastoh

Hamed Nastoh was born on December 18, 1985, in Abbotsford, British Columbia, to Nasima and Karim Nastoh, who had emigrated from Afghanistan a year earlier to escape the Soviet-Afghanistan War. Nasima held a psychology degree and worked at Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada, while Karim was a professor of geography and history who also sold Persian rugs. Hamed attended Enver Creek Secondary School in Surrey alongside his brother Abdullah and was described as an intelligent student with interests in horror movies, literature, dance, and music.

According to his suicide note, Hamed, then 14 years old, was subjected to in-person bullying at school, where classmates called him slurs including "gay," "fag," "queer," "four-eyes," and "big-nose," despite his academic grades averaging above 90 percent. In the note addressed to his parents, he wrote, "I hate myself for doing this to you. I really, really hate myself, but there is no other way out."

On the evening of March 11, 2000, Hamed's mother, father, and younger brother David left the family home on 143rd Street in Surrey to visit a neighbour, leaving Hamed and Abdullah alone. While Abdullah showered, Hamed put on a new jacket and left the house, travelling roughly 10 kilometres to the Pattullo Bridge, which connects Surrey to New Westminster across the Fraser River. He jumped from the bridge to his death.

When Abdullah discovered Hamed was missing, he contacted his parents, and Karim returned home, finding the note and contacting the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP). Because the note gave no explicit method, RCMP searched the area around the family's home. The following day, police recovered Nastoh's body from the Fraser River south of the bridge. He was wearing a backpack filled with rocks, which a coroner later described as unnecessary given the fatal nature of the fall; death resulted from blunt trauma sustained upon impact with the water. Notably, one week before his death, Hamed had attended a school suicide-awareness seminar presented by a mother who had lost her son to suicide; in his note he referenced this talk, saying he had given his parents a "hint" as the speaker described.

Hamed's death prompted public attention to school bullying in British Columbia. The province developed a Grade 12 elective course on homosexuality issues, introduced in 2007, following a process connected to a British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal complaint regarding how schools addressed sexual identity topics. Separately, Nasima Nastoh founded Hamed Nastoh's Anti-Bullying Coalition to raise awareness of bullying's effects on children and to support parents of bullied children, using her son's note and story in presentations to schools across the province.