EVANSTON, Ill. — A 10-year-old boy reportedly found hanging from a coat hook at his suburban Chicago school took his own life, according to a preliminary coroner's office ruling on Wednesday. A daily ledger released by the Cook County medical examiner noted "hanging" and "suicide" as the cause of death for fifth-grader Aquan Lewis, who was found unresponsive in a bathroom at the Evanston school Tuesday afternoon and was pronounced dead at a hospital Wednesday morning.
The boy's distraught mother, Angel Lewis, left a school district building hours earlier, not speaking directly to reporters but saying over and over, "He should have been accounted for. He should have been accounted for."
A janitor at Oakton Elementary School, Elliott Lieteau, said he found Aquan on the floor of the restroom and that others told him the boy had been pulled off a hook. Lieteau said he performed CPR.
Speaking before the coroner's finding, a community activist who accompanied Lewis and acted as her spokeswoman said Lewis did not believe her boy committed suicide.
"She sent her son to school yesterday morning in good spirits," Dawn Valenti said. "The next thing she knows she's getting a call that her son died. ... He did not commit suicide. There was nothing wrong with her son."
Evanston police Cmdr. Tom Guenther said the coroner's finding of suicide would not affect how police conduct the investigation. Asked if the finding ruled out any possibility of foul play or an accident, Guenther said, "I don't think we're going to jump to any conclusions at this point."
The medical examiner's office did not return a message from The Associated Press seeking details about the suicide finding.
Before leaving the school district building, Aquan's mother stood at the back of the room during a news conference with police and school officials, crying and sometimes shaking her head as officials fielded questions.
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