A mom from Oklahoma who posted a video of her discussing active shooter drills with her 5-year-old son as he got ready for school went popular on TikTok.
With her son Weston, Cassie Walton, a 22-year-old mother of two from McAlester, Oklahoma, acts out a school shooting practise in the TikTok video, which has received over one million likes. She questions him on what he would do if he overheard the principal announce a shooting over the intercom in the video.
In the video, her kid can be seen hiding in a bedroom corner and demonstrating how he would use his bulletproof Spider-Man bag as a barrier to protect himself. Walton congratulates her son on a job well done.
She further instructs her son to “remain completely silent” if a gunman is present in the classroom and police officers are enforcing the door and enquiring as to who is inside. If her kid manages to flee, she instructs him to make his way as far away from the school as he can.
According to Walton, who spoke to CBS News on Tuesday, she felt it was vital to teach her kid the lesson “just in case.” She claimed she was worried the drills could make him afraid to go to school, but he ended up taking them seriously.
“Whenever I was filming the video, I was pushing back all of the tears, trying to get all of that out, and he’s very smart, and he took in all of the information very well, and he wasn’t scared of the drill, he knew it was a serious situation,” Walton said. “But, you know, as a 5-year-old, he was concerned about the bad guys, and him being 5, he was just like, ‘I’ll just karate chop him if I need to.’ And I was like, ‘No, not quite, it’s a little more serious than that.’ Then, after that, he was able to take it a little more serious.”
Walton told CBS News that she was taken aback by the response her video got. She claimed that after seeing another mother write about the $140 bulletproof backpack insert online, she was motivated to buy it.
“Honestly, when it comes to protecting your children, no amount of money is too much,” Walton said. “I wish that it wasn’t necessary, and I wish we could come up with a better solution.”
