Parkland Shooting survivor and anti-gun advocate David Hogg has reportedly received multiple death threats in recent weeks. According to TMZ, the family of the 17-year-old student is taking action.
Hogg’s mother, Rebecca Boldrick, told TMZ on Thursday that the family has compiled several of these death threats lobbied at Hogg on Facebook to the FBI. The straw that broke the camel’s back came when one commenter wrote, “You can change you settings, but you can never change your faces, your whole family is exposed because of your piece of s— kid.
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The commenter then went on to mention Hogg’s birthday party, which was not public knowledge, and said it “will be an interesting event.” The family took that as a direct threat against their son.
Another of the hateful comments read, “You should have had an abortion. Your son is a psychopathic douch bag. Drive the whole family off a cliff… just admit failure.”
TMZ confirmed that both the FBI and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police have been contacted, as the commenter identified him as Canadian.
“In a statement, Rebecca tells TMZ the family understands that, while some people don’t agree with their anti-gun message, that shouldn’t give them the right to threaten or intimidate her family, particularly through social media,” TMZ reported. “She says any threats they receive will have consequences.”
Hogg was one of the vocal survivors of the Parkland Shooting, where 14 children and three teachers were murdered by 19-year-old Nikolas Cruz after the expelled student opened fire with an AR-15 on Feb. 14.
Hogg was one of 65 students who hid in a single classroom during the school shooting, and interviewed students on his phone while Cruz walked through the building.
“It was around that time that I decided I would start recording video so that if I was left in that classroom and all of our 65 souls were left on that classroom floor, our voices would echo on,” Hogg said in an interview with People.
Since then Hogg has taken part in numerous rallies, non-violent protests and marches as he and other students fight for stricter gun laws.
“It has to be our generation that says, ‘No, we are not going to take this anymore,’” Hogg said in the same People interview. “Now is our one and only chance to stand up, because if we don’t do it now, when?
A conspiracy theory that Hogg was a “crisis actor” began floating around in the days following hs first few public interviews. Hogg assured that wasn’t the case, and the theory was debunked when his name and photo were confirmed to be in the Stoneman Douglas High School yearbook.
“I just think it’s a testament to the sick immaturity and broken state of our government when these people feel the need to pedal conspiracy theories about people that were in a school shooting where 17 people died and it just makes me sick,” Hogg said in an interview with BuzzFeed. “It’s immature, rude, and inhuman for these people to destroy the people trying to prevent the death of the future of America because they won’t.”
