Middle School Cheerleaders Made a TikTok Video Portraying a School Shooting. They Were Charged With a Crime. [View all]

Middle School Cheerleaders Made a TikTok Video Portraying a School Shooting. They Were Charged With a Crime.

by Aliyya Swaby
July 28, 2025, 6 a.m. EDT


(ProPublica) One afternoon in mid-September, a group of middle school girls in rural East Tennessee decided to film a TikTok video while waiting to begin cheerleading practice.

In the 45-second video posted later that day, one girl enters the classroom holding a cellphone. “Put your hands up,” she says, while a classmate flickers the lights on and off. As the camera pans across the classroom, several girls dramatically fall back on a desk or the floor and lie motionless, pretending they were killed.

When another student enters and surveys the bodies on the ground in poorly feigned shock, few manage to suppress their giggles. Throughout the video, which ProPublica obtained, a line of text reads: “To be continued……”

....(snip)....

By the end of the day, the Greene County Sheriff’s Department charged her and 15 other middle school cheerleaders with disorderly conduct for making and posting the video. Standing outside the school’s brick facade, Lt. Teddy Lawing said in a press conference that the girls had to be “held accountable through the court system” to show that “this type of activity is not warranted.” The sheriff’s office did not respond to ProPublica’s questions about the incident. .................(more)

https://www.propublica.org/article/social-media-arrests-school-threats-law-tennessee