BOSTON -- Sirdeaner Walker, 44, has been surrounded by family after discovering her son, Carl Walker-Hoover, 11, hanging by an extension cord in the third-floor landing of the family's Northampton Avenue home in Springfield.

Walker said her boy, upset yet again over another bullying episode at school, had committed suicide.

"They were always saying, 'you're gay, you must be gay, you act like a girl,'" said Walker.

Newscenter 5's Amalia Barreda reported that Carl constantly complained about being targeted by a group of kids at the New Leadership Charter School, where he was a 6th-grader. His mother said school administrators would chalk it up to student immaturity, and Carl was afraid to point the finger at anyone.

"I'd say, 'Carl, you know the names of the students, tell them.' He said, 'I don't want to tell them because they'll label me a snitch, a rat, a tattletale,'" said Walker.

She said that she contacted the school repeatedly over the last six months to ask teachers to intervene.

"They cannot sit here and say they didn't know, because they knew. They knew he was being made fun of. That's why they're not going to talk to you," Walker said.

The school and the chairman of its board of directors did not return Newscenter 5's phone calls.

Funeral services have been scheduled for Monday at the Celestrial Praise Church, which Carl attended with his mother every Sunday.

"My message is that the bullying, the teasing, the hurtful words, it has to stop," said Walker.

Carl's mother said she has survived domestic violence, cancer, and even homelessness. She said none of that pain compares to what she's going through now.

"It was the worst experience of my life, and I'm a breast cancer survivor. Four years, it was four years ago I had breast cancer."

According to the National Youth Violence Prevention Resource Center, almost 30 percent of youth in the U.S. are involved in bullying as either a bully, a target of bullying, or both. The Resource Center also reports that a survey of students in grades 6-10 shows that 13 percent report having bullied other students, and another 11 percent said they were the targets of bullying.

A report released by the Massachusetts Department of Public Health on Wednesday showed that the suicide rate among young male adults in the state rose 28 percent in 2007. The category, however, does not reflect deaths among teenagers and students Carl’s age.