Jonathan Destin is dead at only 27 years old: the moving story of the young man had been adapted by TF1

The death of a symbol. It was on February 8, 2011 that the young Jonathan Destin, then 16, tried to commit suicide by setting himself on fire then flowing into the Deûle, a river in northern France. Victim of harassment first in elementary school and then in college, the young man could no longer bear the tortures that made his daily life and tried to end his life – a decision he regretted as he had declared to our colleagues from Télé Star. He survived his self-immolation and fall, however, and was subsequently hospitalized in serious condition with over 70% of his body surface burned. Two and a half months of coma, 23 operations and three years of hospitalization later, Jonathan Destin was released from the hospital. This tragedy changed his life in more ways than one, making him the epitome of the fight against school bullying.

This Monday, August 22,The voice of the North announced that Jonathan Destin died in his sleep on the night of the 20th to the 21st, aged 27. His mother, Marie-Pierre Destin, also announced the sad news on her Facebook account, knowing that the death of her son would affect not only the inhabitants of Marquette-lez-Lille where he lived, but also thousands of people in through France. “To all those who knew Jonathan, through his story, his book, his film, in schools, who one day met him, spoke to you, who have been following us for so many years, I unfortunately have sad news. to announce to you: Jonathan died on Saturday at my home in his sleep. It is with a torn heart that I announce this to you”. The post quickly received hundreds of comments expressing condolences and sympathy for Jonathan’s loved ones. The exact cause of death has not yet been released. and an investigation was opened to determine the circumstances.

The life of Jonathan Destin was adapted by TF1

After his suicide attempt, Jonathan Destin has indeed drew attention to the terrible phenomenon of which he was the victim and which had pushed him to want to kill himself. To fight against school bullying, the young man wrote a book published in 2013 by XO editions, doomed to kill me. His story was also seen by more than 6 million viewers on November 5, 2018 during the broadcast on TF1 of the TV movie The day I burned my heart, directly adapted from the life of Jonathan Destin, with Camille Chamoux and Michaël Youn in the cast. As Jonathan so aptly put it in The voice of the North in October 2019, for school bullying as for many other societal problems, “Free speech is the first thing to do”.