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.
Isn’t WhatsApp end to end encrypted?
Yes, but there are 3 ends…
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-04-28/us-ends-investigation-into-claims-whatsapp-chats-aren-t-private
If it is (can’t look at the source can we), it is only is as long as they choose it to be. It’s removal is always just one update away.
“maybe”
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.
Did you never say you want to “murder/shoot” someone out of frustration or as a joke to a close one? Imagine the FBI coming for you because of that.
I definitely haven’t said that about a child. Absolutely not if I was a teacher. You people are fucking weird.
If she was a teenage incel y’all would be all over this saying she should be in prison.
I am really surprised this shocks you. By curiosity which culture are you from?
I think I can find countless comedy tv show scenes where some character says something like “ugh I am going to kill him” to show frustration, but it’s perfectly obvious it’s just an expression.
Again, she’s a fucking elementary school teacher! That is not an acceptable “joke” from someone like that.
And I’m american btw. I don’t think we should be normalizing school teachers making mass shooting jokes. That is absolutely not the same as a fictional character reading from a script.
Becoming an elementary schoolteacher does not magically extract you from the culture you have been living in your whole life.
It’s not a mass shooting job, it’s “shooting the student” that made her loose her work, according to the article.
The reason I mentioned comedy TV shows, is that they are a good source of what’s consensual behavior for the time and place where they have been created. Those TV shows have this kind of behavior because they are also a normal behavior in society.
Those shows are mostly American (but I have observed the same in France, Spain, and Japan), so it seems your are an exception there with your intolerance of this common human behavior.
Lol, yeah I’m sure, ChrisChan. Touch some grass sometime and you’ll see how true that is.
Where do you find the list of acceptable jokes and who gives a fuck about it? Grow the fuck up dude, your culture is sick and making jokes about it is a coping mechanism.
Ironic fucking username, lol.
Yes, yes, we all understand ironic usernames 🙄
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.