Kyle City Council member Claudia Zapata resigned effective Saturday, Oct. 3, saying a prolonged campaign of harassment and dehumanization had made it impossible for her to continue serving the city. Zapata, the council’s District 3 at-large representative, announced her departure in a Friday press release and a longer Facebook statement. She was elected and sworn in last November; council terms are three years. “As much as I love Kyle, I cannot continue to absorb abuse in order to serve it,” she said in the release. Zapata said the harassment over the past year went beyond disagreement with her votes or leadership. She described attacks in Facebook groups devoted to Kyle politics and current events, including racist, homophobic, sexist and fatphobic insults, jokes about her suicide, and degrading, sexualized images generated with artificial intelligence. She said the attacks also reached City Hall and that she had at times considered taking her own life. Zapata’s claims have not been independently detailed in the information available about her resignation. The City of Kyle had been asked to respond to the allegations. No city response was included in the account of Zapata’s announcement. Her departure leaves a council seat vacant. The city’s next steps for filling it were not specified.