For background, I went to school with this kid, we’ll name M. M was a very quiet, shy, and socially awkward teenager. He was bullied horribly not just in school, but also during outside events, and social media. M was really smart and kind and wasn’t the sort of person to act this way if you asked me. besides everyone else, Me and a few other kids were the only nice ones towards M. We tried including him in our social calendar. Inviting him to parties, asking if he’d want to get lunch/dinner with us, if he was up for some video games. Stuff like that. We genuinely felt sorry for him and all that was happening to him. On top of that, I found out that his father was an alcoholic who had started drinking after his mom had died when he was around 8 and hadn’t stopped since. So we knew his home life wasn’t great, and his interactions at school weren’t any better. But besides that, he seemed to be powering through it like a champ.
At times he did show up to hang out with us, the topic of bullying almost never came up. Not because we didn’t brought it up or anything. He just didn’t really want to talk about it apparently and we respected that. There were some times when he would open up about some of the stuff that he was put through by some other classmates. For example, he said he once had all his books and papers knocked out of his hand in the halls and was called a bunch of different names. He also said the girls weren’t kind to him either. He said he’d listened to one conversation at lunch time about them saying that he seemed to weak as a man to even be around, and that neither of them could be caught dead trying to make a move on him. This really hurt him as he had been wanting a girlfriend for the past 4 or 5 years.
He talked about how he was never in love with anyone and that he had really wanted to give it a try, but just never got the chance. The bullying eventually got so bad that he sometimes went days without coming to school or even just speaking with us. We tried to text him, but he wouldn’t answer. We tried calling him, but it went to voicemail. Whenever we’d catch him at school, we would ask him about what he was doing and why he wasn’t talking to us ect. He would just play it off as him being busy, and that he was trying to find a job, and he was working on something. We believed him, as obviously there’s nothing really suspicious about that and it all seemed like legitimate reasons that he would be absent. We wish it had been the truth. We REALLY wish it had been the truth.
And had we have not caught him in time, something horrific could have unfolded. After M had become basically a loner from our group, but also school we had just decided to let him be. After all, we wouldn’t want to get in the way of him getting a job, or this project he was working on. It wasn’t until one time I came across his Instagram account (I didn’t know he even had social media). The only reason I knew it was him was because his username was his real name, and he had one selfie of him posted a few years back. I noticed he had a youtube channel linked on his profile, so I decided to look into it and see what he was up to. I’m really glad I did that now. He had only 2 videos. One was called “Torment” and the other was called “Soon” they were both black thumbnails and screen through out both of them. I watched the first one, “Torment” in it, his voice sounded really shaken, and he began talking through all of the bullying he had been put through, and also admitted that his father had beaten him one time after he was really drunk.
Listening to his voice, and all the things he went through was really really hard to listen to. After all, he was a genuinely nice kid and was very respectful to everyone he met. So listening to this was very sad. I was contemplating on if I wanted to watch his second video. My curiosity got the better of me. The video was only 40 seconds long and he didn’t say much except for how much pain he was in and that he wished all his bullies the most extreme torment imaginable. He said in the description, he would include a bunch of links to different texts, and pictures that he wanted this world to see. Now I was getting worried. I should have known what those texts and images would be, but I didn’t. I opened the first one, to find a picture of him with what appeared to be a bulletproof vest on with some gloves. Like some black fingerless gloves you use for working out or whatever. The next picture included a picture of an AR and a shotgun next to a whole bunch of magazines for the rifle. (I didn’t even know he had guns. He never mentioned any of them at all to me or my friends). I couldn’t tell if it was an airsoft gun or what. But it’s safe to say at this point I was panicking. The next one was a text file, which listed the names of everyone that bullied him, one of which I knew as a former friend. (He also picked on me which is why I stopped hanging out with him)
One other photo showed him posing with his gun, bulletproof vest, dark sunglasses, gloves and some military pants. At this point I was frozen. Completely mortified by what I was looking at. I found it harder to breathe, I felt tears building up in my eyes and my body turning cold. One last file. It was a Microsoft paint one, which had an entire map of our school. I mean an entire map. Every single room, closet, classroom and stairwell were listed. My first instinct was to immediately call the FBI, and tell everyone in our friend group. I took screenshots of everything and showed them all to my friends, police, and teachers. Eventually an FBI agent took me and my friends for questioning. I couldn’t stop shaking and neither could my friends. We answered absolutely everything we knew truthfully and honestly. (This was the first time I had ever been interrogated by any sort of agent before, and given the seriousness of this situation just made it even worse). Eventually they gave us an update saying that M was arrested and taken into custody and would also be forced to see a Psychiatrist at a mental institution that was maybe 20 miles away from our town.
He would also have to have all his firearms confiscated and his dad would have to be questioned as well. Everyone starting praising me and thanking me saying that had I have not turned him in, this could have easily been the worse thing that has even happened at our school or town. Our school also took bullying way way more seriously after everything that happened with M. The school also said that they would have staff, and family follow and monitor every students social media just to look for any threats or unusual behavior. This was easily the most disturbing thing that I have ever had to deal with. As for my friend group, we still are together and talk almost everyday. We never broke up and we have a few new members as well after we all graduated. As for M, no one has ever heard or spoken to him since. No one knows where he is now or what his life is like, but none of us have ever tried looking for him or contacting him. Wherever he is though, we all hope that he has gotten the help he needs and stays away from firearms for as long as he lives.