Massachusetts teenager Michelle Carter has been accused of involuntary manslaughter after pressuring her boyfriend to commit suicide through texts, according to Bristol County documents released by the district attorney’s office.

According to prosecutors, Carter antagonized her boyfriend, 18-year-old Conrad Roy III, to commit suicide for almost a week before Roy committed the act. Prosecutors also stated, “She counseled him to overcome his fears; researched methods of committing suicide painlessly; and lied to police, his family and her friends about his whereabouts during the act itself and after.”

Court documents highlight hundreds of text messages between Carter and Roy from July 6 to July 12, 2014. According to the documents, “Carter assisted Conrad’s suicide by counseling him to overcome his doubts, devising a plan to run a combustion engine within his truck … and by directing him to go back in his truck after he exited it, when he became frightened and said the plan was working.”

“If you emit 3200 ppm for five or ten minutes you will die within a half hour. You lose consciousness with no pain. You fall asleep and die,” Carter wrote in a text message to Roy describing to him how he could go about killing himself within his truck.

CNN, in an article over the incident, writes, “Carter, 18, was indicted in February, but the text messages exchanged between the two were released late last month in a prosecution response to a defense motion seeking to dismiss the indictment.

Carter’s attorney, Joseph Cataldo, has maintained Carter’s innocence. Cataldo comments that Roy had been planning the suicide for months and that Carter had encouraged Roy to seek professional help, eventually resigning herself that he would act on his word.

Carter, in another text message, writes, “I think your parents know you’re in a really bad place…They know that you’re doing this to be happy and I think they will understand and accept it. They will always carry you in their hearts.”

Police officials state that September 2014, two month after Roy’s death, Carter organized a softball tournament in Roy’s memory, $2,300 for mental health awareness.
Carter was charged on February 6 in New Bedford Juvenile Court and released on $2,500 bail. Carter was indicted as a youthful offender because she was not 18 at the time of Roy’s death, and she is now being trialed again as of late.