Metro

Teacher not responsible for cheating student’s suicide: investigators

Moments after getting caught cheating, a Manhattan honors student wrote about her shame and despair in heartbreaking detail on the front and back of a quiz before leaping to her death into the Hudson River, officials revealed on Monday.

“What am I doing? Why am I doing it?” tragic Omotayo Adeoye, 17, wrote on the German-language quiz.

“This is not me,” the despondent junior wrote before rising from her desk at the highly competitive HS for Mathematics, Science and Engineering in Harlem.

“I am better than this, losing my hard earned credibility for some meaningless quiz,” wrote Adeoye, who had a history of both academic excellence and suicide attempts.

“This is beyond stupid,” she added.

Then Adeoye flipped the paper over and wrote on the back, “I just want to go away forever on the bottom of the river.”

The details of Adeoye’s tragic last note were released on Monday as part of Special Commissioner of Investigation Richard Condon’s report that found teacher Eva Malikova and other staffers were not responsible for the girl’s death. Investigators interviewed 16 students who said Malikova caught Adeoye peeking at her cellphone on May 29 and took it away, warning the entire class, “This is a practice test and you are only hurting yourself if you cheat.”

But Malikova hadn’t raised her voice, and her comments weren’t directed to the girl, who told the teacher, “I am sorry.”

Adeoye then wrote her suicide note, excused herself to go to the bathroom, and then walked from the West 140th Street school to the river’s edge at West 165th Street, jumping into the choppy waters after placing her ID on a rock.

School officials said authorities were contacted immediately after realizing Adeoye went missing.

Adeoye had tried to commit suicide in January 2013, at the same spot in Harlem where she killed herself, Principal Crystal Bonds told investigators.

Bonds described Malikova, who started at the school last September, as an “excellent teacher.”

“What’s happened has happened,” Adeoye’s father, James, said sadly of the investigators’ report. “There’s nothing we can do about it. Everybody is going to die anyway. Her time was her time.”

Additional reporting by Aaron Short