Melinda Coleman, mother of Daisy Coleman, one of the teenage girls who featured on "Audrie & Daisy" -- the Netflix documentary about three rape cases that took place in 2011 and 2012 – died by suicide on Sunday, four months after Daisy took her own life.
SafeBae, a youth-led sexual assault prevention group created by Daisy, made the heartbreaking announcement on their Instagram page.
"We are in shock and disbelief to share with our SafeBae family, that we lost Melinda Coleman to suicide this evening. The bottomless grief of losing her son, Tristan and Daisy was more than she could face most days," the post read.
Melinda Shared FB Posts Dedicated to Daisy Before Committing Suicide
Daisy was found dead with a self-inflicted gunshot wound on Aug 5 after Melinda asked authorities to perform a welfare check on her daughter. Hours before taking her own life, Melinda posted a series of posts and pictures dedicated to her late daughter, on her Facebook page.
In another post, she shared a "time capsule" message from Daisy's father to her. The letter described the joy Melinda and Michael Coleman experienced when Daisy was born.
A Family Struck by Tragedy
The tragedies surrounding the Coleman family began years ago when Daisy's father died in a car accident. A few years later, at the age of 14, Daisy was raped by a high school football player in Maryville, Missouri, in 2012.
In 2016, Daisy featured on the Netflix documentary to share how she was raped at a house party after being plied with alcohol and then left in the freezing cold near her home.
A felony assault charge against Daisy Coleman's alleged attacker, who was the grandson of a former state representative, was dropped but authorities reopened the case when a 2013 report in The Star caused the small-town scandal to go viral.
Ultimately, a special prosecutor, Jackson County's Jean Peters Baker, reviewed the matter and 19-year-old Matthew Barnett pleaded guilty to misdemeanor child endangerment for leaving Daisy in the cold. Barnett wasn't charged with sexual assault due to insufficient evidence and received two years of probation and was ordered to apologize to Daisy.
The Netflix documentary covered the outcome of the case, the cyberbullying and the hostile reaction Daisy and her family faced from the community, forcing them to eventually move out of Maryville.
According to Melinda, Daisy never fully recovered from the trauma of her sexual assault, which eventually drove her to take her own life. "She never recovered from what those boys did to her and it's just not fair. My baby girl is gone," she said at the time.
The family dealt with another tragedy two years ago when Daisy's younger brother, Tristan Coleman, died in a car crash in June 2018. Melinda is now survived by her two sons, Logan and Charlie.
