Charlestown Football Player Jase Emily Died Three Days After a THC Vape Arrest, and the Expulsion Rule Is Still in the Handbook

Charlestown, Indiana – Jase Emily was a Charlestown High School Pirate with a 4.6 grade-point average, a football helmet still waiting on him, and three days between a locker and a funeral. On May 17, 2023, a school resource officer took a vape pen out of the 15-year-old’s locker, the pen tested positive for marijuana, and the teenager was handcuffed at school, taken to the Clark County Juvenile Detention Center, and put on the road to expulsion. On May 20 he died by suicide. His mother, Elyce Emily, later told WHAS11 that the part her son could not shake was simpler than any policy manual: he had been shackled where other people could see him, and football, the thing that organized his week, was gone.

The family’s lawyers answered with a tort claim against the Greater Clark County Schools and the Clark County Sheriff’s Office, the notice Indiana law requires before someone sues a public body. Gordon Ingle, of the Ingle Law Office, said the punishment did not fit the conduct. He also said the district and the sheriff’s office had no probable cause to open the locker and no right to run a criminal interview of a juvenile before that child had a real chance to talk to a parent. Evan Bardach, also of the Ingle office, described the sequence the same way: a criminal investigation that started before anyone called the family.

Born November 3, 2007, in Louisville, Kentucky, Jase was remembered by relatives as a soft-spoken teenager who liked video games, music, and the people in his house. Elyce said he had not looked like a boy in crisis. « He never seemed unhappy or upset. He just liked his life and he liked everything, » she told WHAS11. What changed, she said, was the news that he would not play the next year. « Finding out he wasn’t going to be able to play the next year, it was rough for him. And it didn’t hit us of what that might do to him until after he was gone. » At a later Charlestown game, cheerleaders wore blue shirts that read « In Loving Memory of Jase Emily, » and players put « JE » stickers on their helmets.

What the arrest file actually said

The file, as WHAS11 reported it, described a pen that tested positive for marijuana. Officer Kevin Fisher, the resource officer named in that reporting, said he looked up the brand and found a product listed at 83 percent THC. A figure from a product page is not a laboratory assay of the liquid in a particular cartridge, and the family’s lawyers have treated the episode as a search and an interrogation problem, not a chemistry problem. Jase told the family he was handcuffed and shackled. Elyce said she was not told until the officer was already on the way to juvenile detention. A parent later picked him up.

« This was just police overreach if there ever were any, » Ingle told WHAS11. Indiana’s juvenile code is built around the idea that a child is not a small adult with a thinner file. Before a minor gives up rights in a custodial setting, the law expects a meaningful chance to consult with a parent or another responsible adult. The Emily claim says that conversation never happened, that the locker was opened without legal justification, and that the detention itself was wrongful. The tort claim names both the school corporation and the sheriff’s office for damages. Neither agency commented when reporters called in September 2023.

The same season, an Oklahoma mother sued after she said a principal strip-searched a 14-year-old over a nicotine vape that was never found, a case The AEGIS Alliance reported as the Heartland Middle School search. The shared fact is not the liquid. It is a school turning a vape into a police event. The retail side of that market is covered in the FDA’s vape crackdown.

The rule that is still printed

Greater Clark did not invent a special penalty for Jase. The student code already said the quiet part in block letters. The Charlestown High School handbook for 2025-2026, approved by the board on July 8, 2025, still carries the alcohol-and-drugs section that was in force when he was arrested. If a student possesses, handles, transmits, or is under the influence of marijuana or another intoxicant on school property, « he or she will be suspended for no fewer than five days » out of school, « the student may be arrested, » and « the process for expelling that student may begin. » A separate tobacco section folds electronic cigarettes, personal vaporizers, and electronic nicotine systems into the definition of tobacco, which is banned during the school day. The handbook also tells families that the school resource officer « is not merely a cop on campus » but « a visible law enforcement presence, » with authority to arrest when conduct warrants it.

That is the sequence the family says ran in seventy-two hours: find the pen, cuff the boy, start the expulsion, take the sport. Football at Charlestown is how a 15-year-old is known in the hall. Elyce’s line about the next season is the case in one sentence. The district can say it followed the book. The grandparents later carried that book into a board meeting and asked someone to change it.

Grandparents, a binder, and a board that did not move

In December 2024, more than a year after the death, Jase’s grandparents, Judy Gibson and William « Bill » Gibson, stood up at a Greater Clark County Schools board meeting. WHAS11’s follow-up, « Grandparents of Charlestown teen who took his own life after arrest still hope for action, » showed them handing members a binder of articles, correspondence, and the statutes they believe the arrest violated. Judy stressed that her grandson was a nonviolent 15-year-old with that 4.6 average. Bill, who called himself Pepaw, told the board he wanted them to meet the boy they would not get to know. « Jase was the sweetest most kind-hearted young man you would ever want to meet, » he said. « Our hearts ache that this ray of sunlight is no longer to shine on us. »

Their specific ask was structural, not symbolic. They want the Charlestown High School resource officer replaced with a Charlestown city police officer, and they say city officers have already been trained for schools inside the city limits. Superintendent Mark Laughner said he could not comment because of the pending litigation. The board took no vote. The grandparents said they would keep coming back.

No public docket that local newsrooms have reported shows a settlement, a dismissal, or a judgment that closes the Emily claim. The litigation Laughner cited in December 2024 is the last status reporters have been able to put on the record. What has changed is the paperwork around it. The five-day suspension, the optional arrest, and the expulsion track for marijuana are still the printed rule. The resource-officer model the Gibsons want torn out is still how the district describes itself.

On April 30, 2026, Laughner, still superintendent, wrote that a threatening voicemail at Jeffersonville High School, another Greater Clark campus, was routed to the resource officer and city police within minutes and judged not credible. That is the job a district wants from an SRO when the danger is real. The Emily file is the other use of the same job: a locker, a THC pen, a child in shackles, and a sport used as the sanction. The Gibsons are not arguing that schools should ignore drugs. They are arguing that a nonviolent 15-year-old should not meet the criminal system before he meets his mother.

A punishment measured in a weekend

Elyce has been consistent about what the claim is for. « There’s no acknowledgment there that what they did was wrong, » she said. « Our goal is to prevent other families from enduring the same ordeal. While we wish for Jase’s return, it remains an unattainable outcome. » The tort claim cannot put a 15-year-old back in a Pirates jersey. It can force a school corporation to say, on paper, whether a locker search, a juvenile interview without a parent, and an expulsion that cancels a season are the response it still wants when the next pen turns up.

Greater Clark’s handbook already draws the line between a nicotine device and marijuana. The open question in Charlestown is who walks a student down it, and whether anyone calls home before the handcuffs close. More of The AEGIS Alliance’s reporting on schools, policing, and the cases families take to court lives in U.S. News et Police Accountability News.

If you or someone you know is struggling or in crisis, help is available. In the United States, call or text 988 to reach the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline, or visit 988lifeline.org.