KANAWHA COUNTY, W.Va. (WSAZ) – WSAZ’s Tim Irr spoke Friday with the father of a teenager who took his own life after he became the victim of a sextortion scheme.

On Nov. 6, Kanawha County Sheriff’s deputies found Bryce Tate, 15, a student at Nitro High School, dead at his home in Cross Lanes.

Bryce’s parents, friends, teachers and fellow parishioners at church all said the same thing -- there were no warning signs leading up to his suicide.

Just days later, there was a big break in the case.

During a telephone interview on Friday, Bryce’s father Adam Tate told Irr that detectives searched his son’s phone and determined he had been the target of an online sextortion scheme, and it all happened quickly. Less than three hours passed from the first text Bryce received after school that day

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