Police responded to a phone call about a hostage situation at the family home of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School student David Hogg on Tuesday morning, which turned out to be a prank, according to local reports.
ABC affiliate Local 10 News reported that the call was placed to the Broward County Sheriff’s office Tuesday morning. Police and the local fire department responded with multiple units and a police helicopter. Hogg was in Washington, D.C. with his mother to receive the RFK Human Rights award at the time of the incident, according to Local 10.
Hogg called the swatting a “distraction” from what he and his peers at the Parkland, Florida high school are “trying to fix here, which is the massive gun violence epidemic in this country,” he told Local 10.
Hogg and a few of his other peers have risen to national prominence in recent months for their advocacy work combatting gun violence. On Valentine’s Day, 17 people were murdered at Hogg’s high school when a 19-year-old former student used his personal AR-15 and other firearms to attack Stoneman Douglas High School.
In the immediate aftermath of shooting, Hogg and fellow student Emma Gonzalez emerged as the faces of a national movement, as the students founded an advocacy group and organized a national “March For Our Lives” event in Washington, D.C.
The two students have also faced unprecedented attacks from far-right conspiracists, who have insisted since the day of the shooting that Hogg and Gonzalez are “crisis actors” paid by the left to push for gun control.
The attacks on Hogg moved mainstream when Fox News host Laura Ingraham posted a tweet mocking Hogg for not getting into college. Hogg, in turn, unleashed his massive Twitter following on Ingraham’s advertisers, calling for a boycott. As advertisers began to drop the “Ingraham Angle,” Ingraham apologized for the remark and took a week off work.
Hogg and the rest of the Stoneman Douglas seniors graduated over the weekend and many are planning to take a gap year to travel state-to-state, pushing for common sense gun reform measures.
To be accurate, Hogg did get into college. He got accepted by three universities, but Ingraham dissed him because he admitted he didn’t get accepted by all of those to which he applied.
Oh, and whoever pulled this stunt needs to be arrested.
Anyone who planned, had knowledge of or supported this crime in any way needs to have their lives literally destroyed.
Arrest and try them all for attempted first degree murder. And make sure every single one of them has their personal information including their own addresses published. This should haunt criminals like this for the rest of their miserable lives. Screw these right wing assholes.
Not a ‘prank’ it’s “attempted murder by cop.”
It’s truly sad when certain adults act childish while the “child” is the real adult in the room.
I can’t imagine that the cops take too kindly to this shit, either. They will come down hard on whoever did this.