Nevada mom whose daughter died by suicide aged 20 after childhood ‘trauma’ reveals regret

A mom-of-four has spoken out about her devastating grief after her daughter died by suicide at the age of just 20 years old.

Lana Gruell lost her youngest daughter, Cashleigh, just five months ago on December 2 and was the one who found her body in her bedroom at the family’s home in Las Vegas, Nevada.

The 56-year-old’s daughter had attempted suicide twice before: once on Thanksgiving Day in 2021 and again on January 3 last year. 

Following her suicide attempts, the family removed items from Cashleigh’s room that she could use to harm herself, locked medications and supplements in a safe, and Lana was able to see her daughter’s location on her phone. 

‘[The grief] is not going to go away. I’m not going to never cry about Cashleigh. She was my baby, she was my person,’ Lana told DailyMail.com.

The 56-year-old mom has taken to TikTok to video journal her journey through grief, but she also celebrates her daughter’s life

‘I can’t tell you that in six more months, “Yeah, I’ll be stronger, I’ll be able to not cry.”‘

Lana said when Cashleigh was born she ‘made our family complete’ and was ‘the light of our lives.’

The ‘well grounded’ 20-year-old was ‘a very intelligent young woman’ and a good student who won a $10,000 scholarship to go towards her college tuition.

But Lana said Cashleigh had been left traumatized after she was sexually abused by a male relative who came to stay with them when she was eight years old.

The mom did not name the relative, but said she was working on filing a police report, unsure about what the outcome would be.

‘He sexually abused her when she was in third grade, and he was an adult, he was in his 20s and definitely knew better, definitely was not something that was… consensual,’ Lana told DailyMail.com.

‘Obviously [it was] something very traumatizing for Cashleigh. She blocked it out for many years, and somewhere in high school started remembering things, started telling me.’

Working in mortgages, Lana knew she wasn’t qualified to help her daughter work through her trauma, so they found her a therapist, a process that was ‘way more difficult than we thought it would be.’

One of the videos she’s posted includes this harrowing doorbell video on the morning she found Cashleigh dead in her bedroom

It shows emergency services arriving at the home and the mom letting out a heartbreaking cry on the front yard

But the mom said she supported her daughter any way she could and followed Cashleigh’s lead when it came to how her daughter wanted to deal with it.

‘Because she was the victim, not me, I asked her to direct me and tell me what she wanted me to do. Of course I knew what I wanted to do right then and there,’ Lana said.

‘Cashleigh said that she wanted to meet the therapist. She did a few times, and she told me that what she wanted was to focus on her own healing at that time.’

Lana added: ‘It was not my place to demand details from her, because I had already made the mistake of allowing that person into her home to harm her.

‘What good would it have done had I made her, as her mom, regurgitate all the gory details? I would have re-traumatized her. She needed to be in a professional setting with somebody that was educated and trained to do so.’

And since sharing her story online, Lana said she had received ‘hundreds, if not a thousand or more messages, emails, phone calls, voicemails, texts from people.’

‘I would say,the majority of them sadly have said that Cashleigh’s story resonates with them because they were also sexually abused,’ she said.

Mom shares emotional and raw moment after she found her daughter dead in her bedroom

As a way of processing Cashleigh’s death, the mom has been documenting her journey through grief on social media via her TikTok account, hoping it will help other parents who were navigating the same thing and those who were thinking of taking their own life.

Her videos – including harrowing doorbell footage in the wake of Cashleigh’s death – are raw and emotional, and act as a form of journaling, a coping mechanism Lana’s therapist suggested she undertake.

In fact, as Lana revealed, that particular video, which shows emergency services arriving at the home and the mom letting out a heartbreaking cry on the front yard, wasn’t even meant to make it onto the internet.

Lana explained that she and her family had come across the clip while they were trying to figure out who had sent them some flowers with an illegible card that were left on their doorstep.

It was then that they discovered the gut-wrenching video of Lana’s reaction.

‘When I posted that video it was a mistake… because I didn’t think I was done. I didn’t really know what I was doing on TikTok, and so I thought that I had made it private,’ the 56-year-old told DailyMail.com.

‘When I called my friend in Washington State and said, “Hey, will you do me a favor and look at my TikTok and see if you can see the video that I posted, because I think I made it private?”‘

But her friend informed her that wasn’t the case.

‘She was crying and she said, “It’s not private.” And I said, “Oh, my God! I got to delete it,”‘ Lana said.

‘And she was like, “Well, I think it’s too late.” I mean it already had thousands of views and comments, and we read them, and it was people that were… saying that, “I never thought about this if I took my life.”

‘So I accidentally put myself out there and I can’t take it back.’

The video has now been seen more than 12.8 million times.

Lana added: ‘I think the thing that has caught so many people’s attention that are considering [suicide] is the raw emotion.’

Lana said Cashleigh had been left traumatized after she was sexually abused by a male relative who came to stay with them when she was eight years old 

‘He sexually abused her when she was in third grade, and he was an adult, he was in his 20s and definitely knew better, definitely was not something that was… consensual,’ Lana said

She added: ‘It was not my place to demand details from her, because I had already made the mistake of allowing that person into her home to harm her’ 

Lana recalls the days leading up to her daughter’s tragic death 

Two days before she was found dead, Cashleigh had been sick and also had an allergic reaction to something she had eaten.

The mom took her daughter to the emergency room and they were there until after midnight.

The next day on December 1, Lana said she was working from home, but she left the house to go to some appointments.

Cashleigh slept for most of the day, but the mother and daughter did speak.

When Lana came home from her meetings and errands later that night, she took some tea to Cashleigh’s room where she was doing a telehealth appointment with her therapist.

Later, the 20-year-old left the house at 8.15pm, a moment that was caught by the house’s security system.

Lana said she checked on her daughter, and Cashleigh told her mom she was hungry and going to get some food.

The mother said she didn’t detect any red flags, and her daughter had plans to move in with her boyfriend and even had job interviews lined up.

They texted back and forth throughout the night. 

‘I had no indication that… she was considering anything. She got home a little bit after 11 [that night]. I knew [my son] Darion was also home, so I went to sleep,’ Lana said.

‘In my mind, everybody was home, everybody was safe.’

The mom woke up the next morning, December 2, and she saw that Darion had left the house.

And since sharing her story online, Lana said she had received ‘hundreds, if not a thousand or more messages, emails, phone calls, voicemails, texts from people’ 

She found out three months after Cashleigh’s death and her funeral from the coroner’s report that the police found a letter that the 20-year-old had written to her family under her pillow 

Lana checked to see if Cashleigh had gone with him, as she often did.

‘I looked at her location on my phone, and I hadn’t even gotten out of bed yet, but her location wasn’t coming up, and I knew that was weird,’ she recalled to DailyMail.com.

So the mom got up and looked in Cashleigh’s bedroom to see if she was there.

‘It was 8.52am when I found her and called 911. I thought about it months later, when I called 911, I was screaming, “My baby’s dead.” And the 911 operator was like, “How old is your baby?” And I was like, “I’m sorry, my daughter, she’s 20,”‘ Lana said.

‘She asked if she had a pulse and I said, “No.”

‘I really have no idea how long she had been gone.’

The last photo that Cashleigh took on her phone was timestamped 1.07am.

Police find a letter from Cashleigh to her family under her pillow – but her loved ones don’t find out until three months later

But more devastating news was to come for the Gruells.

Lana found out three months after Cashleigh’s death and funeral from the coroner’s report that the police found a letter that the 20-year-old had written to her family under her pillow.

‘They took it and never even showed it to us,’ Lana told DailyMail.com.

‘It was a two-page letter. The first page was, “I’m sorry, I love you…” and then [on] the second page she listed her [final] wishes.

‘It shows you how close that we all were that thankfully we carried out her wishes.

‘But again when I put that on TikTok, I’ve received so many messages and comments from people that have said they lost their loved ones a year ago, [or whenever], and they still haven’t been able to get a copy of the letter. There has to be a protocol put in place.’

‘It was a two-page letter. The first page was, “I’m sorry, I love you…” and then [on] the second page she listed her [final] wishes,’ Lana said 

Lana added she had to spend three days calling and emailing the police to try and find a point of contact that the family could liaise with about Cashleigh’s death. 

‘They were in our home, in her room and left. Never said anything about, “Oh by the way, here’s my badge number, here’s the event number, here’s my contact info, if you think of anything call me.” That can’t be right,’ she said.

Lana said she was grateful that she and her family had casually discussed how they would want to be buried during the pandemic.

‘Three months later, it’s like ripping off the scab,’ she said.

In memory of Cashleigh, Lana said she and her family were in the beginning stages of setting up a foundation, with the mom adding she wanted to advocate for sexual abuse victims and grieving families who had been impacted by a loved one’s suicide.

‘For the past few months, with all the messages from people saying, I either have a daughter or a son, or I myself was sexually abused, I’m going to fight to change the the laws for how sexual abuse is treated in the court. It it should be a higher [penalty] crime,’ Lana told DailyMail.com.

If you or anyone you know needs help, you can reach Samaritans NYC at 212-673-3000 or the Trevor Lifeline at 1-866-488-7386.

For confidential assistance, call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline on 988 or click here.