Sixty minutes. That’s how long it took for a private Snapchat message to travel from Kristen Volpe’s phone to the FBI to the deputies standing in her elementary school hallway. On January 29, 2025, the 22-year-old student teacher at John L. Hensey Elementary in Washington, Illinois, vented to her boyfriend and two roommates — three people total — after a student closed her laptop mid-class and wiped her lesson plan. She referenced shooting the student or the school. She meant it as a frustrated joke. Snapchat’s algorithm didn’t get the humor.
No student reported her. No parent. No coworker. The flag was entirely automated. Snapchat’s policy permits voluntary emergency disclosures to law enforcement — no warrant required — when the platform determines imminent harm exists. The algorithm makes that initial call. Think of it like your Ring doorbell deciding to call 911 on its own, except the doorbell is reading your text messages.
Yeah, I can’t feel bad for her. If you’re a teacher in the USA, you should NEVER be “joking” about shooting your students!
Edit: JFC, it’s like trying to tell a southerner not to say the hard R. “Why can’t I say it? I have free speech don’t I?”
You can joke about everything, but not with everyone.
She was venting to her boyfriend. It was never meant to become public, or shared in a group, or anyone but her boyfriend, who, lets be bold and assume, knows her enough to assess if she’s really joking or she’s having a nervous breakdown.
So yes: the one and only issue here, is a Snapchat conversation is never a 1:1 conversation, nor are Instagram, Whatsapp, FB Messenger and what not discussions.
Putting the blame on her is normalizing global surveillance.
Even with your close friends in a private chat ?
I would argue no. I dont want cops talking about shooting jaywalkers either, and I’d say a teacher should be more sensitive.
She’s 22, she spent her whole life in shooting drills at school. She might have survived one herself. That’s a generational experience similar to the Millennial suicide jokes. The solution is societal, not this.
She’s talking about shooting CHILDREN, you absolute psychopath!
The children that are routinely shot in her career field?
That’s the POINT!
Maybe we should fix the society that lets firearms be the number one cause of child death, and not punish people who develop coping mechanisms that come from said society? She probably hears school shooting jokes all day long.