Brandy Vela, 18, from Texas City, US, sent a final text to her devastated loved ones, which read: “I love you so much just remember that please and I’m so sorry for everything.”

As her parents and grandparents hurried to catch her, they found her in the bedroom with a gun. She died in hospital on Tuesday hours after she had tried to kill herself. Ms. Vela revealed her sister had always been bullied for her weight, but in recent months it had turned into a relentless campaign of cyberbullying.

She told CNN: “People would make up fake Facebook accounts and they would message her and she wouldn’t respond and they would still come at her.“They would say really, really mean things like, ‘Why are you still here?’

They would call her fat and ugly. She was beautiful, absolutely beautiful; the only thing people could find to pick on her was her weight.” Brandy’s father, Raul Vela, added “other students had begun in April to create fake accounts pretending to be her”.

Brandy’s entire family believe her death was due to an onslaught of bullying for years. The Texas City Police Department released a statement saying its investigators are still looking into the cyber-bullying allegations. Melissa Tortorici, the communications director for the Texas City independent School District where Brandy was a high school senior, said the community was “devastated.”