United States: FBI investigates school shooting threat posted on TikTok
Steph Deschamps / December 18, 2021
U.S. federal police are investigating a threat of school shootings in the United States, posted on the social network TikTok and whose virality has led many schools to alert parents.
Various authorities downplayed the credibility of the threat, released in the form of videos featuring a school shooting contest, that gun and bomb attacks would occur Friday in schools across the United States.
The rumor came two weeks after a deadly shooting at a high school in Oxford, Michigan, where a 15-year-old killed four students and wounded several others with a semi-automatic pistol given to him by his parents.
Information is circulating that today is a day of attacks on schools, officials at a Washington, D.C., school warned in an e-mail Friday, adding that the administration and local police are aware of this and are monitoring it closely.
The Pennsbury, Pennsylvania, school district, meanwhile, told parents that there would be an increased police presence around its buildings, though it does not believe this threat is credible. TikTok assured to conduct the investigation while seeming to distance itself from these videos that appeared on its platform. For its part, the FBI said it takes all potential threats seriously.
Everytown For Gun Safety, an organization that advocates for better gun control, has counted at least 149 school shootings in 2021 in the United States, killing a total of 32 and injuring 94.