Leelah passed away on December 28, 2014. She scheduled for her suicide note to be automatically posted on her Tumblr account at 5:30 pm. In the note, she stated her intention to end her life commenting "I have decided I've had enough. I'm never going to transition successfully, even when I move out. I'm never going to be happy with the way I look or sound. I'm never going to have enough friends to satisfy me. I'm never going to have enough love to satisfy me. I'm never going to find a man who loves me. I'm never going to be happy. Either I live the rest of my life as a lonely man who wishes he were a woman or I live my life as a lonelier woman who hates herself. There's no winning. There's no way out. I'm sad enough already, I don't need my life to get any worse. People say "it gets better" but that isn't true in my case. It gets worse. Each day I get worse. That's the gist of it, that's why I feel like killing myself. Sorry if that's not a good enough reason for you, it's good enough for me." She truly believed there was no point of her living.
She wanted all of her belongings and money to go to a trans advocacy charity, and called for gender issues to be taught in schools. She noted "My death needs to mean something. My death needs to be counted in the number of transgender people who commit suicide this year. I want someone to look at that number to look at that number and say 'that's fucked up' and fix it. Fix society. Please."
She made a second post apologizing to her close friends and siblings for the trauma that her suicide would put them through, but also contained a message to her parents: "Fuck you. You can't just control other people like that. That's messed up". She'd written an additional note saying "I've had enough" which was on her bed. Her mother threw it away after the police made a copy of it.
At 2:30 am, Leelah walked 3-4 miles from her parent's house nearby Kings Mills, Ohio. She died at the scene. An investigation was launched by the Ohio State Highway Patrol, while her body was transported to the Montgomery County coroner, where an autopsy was scheduled.
Within 2 days of posting her suicide note, it attracted 82,272 views by December 31st. It was reposted on Tumblr 200,000 times.
Her family had a funeral. She was later cremated. The Ohio State Patrol completed their investigation into her death on April 30, 2015 conforming it was suicide.
