‘Teacher’ lies about Santa Fe shooting

In the immediate aftermath of the May 2018 shooting at Santa Fe High School, a man who said he witnessed the carnage seemed to turn up everywhere.

The man calling himself David Briscoe appeared in Time as a substitute teacher seemingly in the wrong place at the wrong time, CNN described his heroism as he ordered his students to “get down” and kept them protected until police came, and the Wall Street Journal relayed the bloodcurdling screams he heard from students in the hallway.

In April, nearly a year after the shooting, he told a strikingly similar story to the Texas Tribune. But after investigating some of his claims, the Tribune did not publish his account of the shooting — because it appears his entire story was an elaborate hoax.

In a roughly 31-minute interview with the Tribune, David Briscoe told his tale: When the first shots rang out — “it was very, very loud” — he said he directed his classroom of nearly a dozen students in the remedial English course he was teaching to muffle their screams with their hands.

He barricaded the doors. Turned off the lights.

He said he could never return to the Houston-area school where 10 died and another 13 were injured last spring.

“Just knowing that there’s blood on the walls where you walk at ... I don’t think I could go back,” he said, so after he and his students were rescued by law enforcement, he said he quit teaching altogether and moved to Florida, three months after he took the

job at Santa Fe High.

But according to the school district, he was never there.

Lindsey Campbell, a spokeswoman for Santa Fe Independent School District, said it had no record of anyone named David Briscoe being employed by the district in any capacity and that the district is confident no one by that name was on campus the day of the shooting last year.

“We are extremely disappointed that an individual that has never been a part of our school community would represent themselves as a survivor of the mass violence tragedy that our community endured,” said Santa Fe ISD Superintendent Leigh Wall. “This situation illustrates how easily misinformation can be created and circulated, especially when the amount of detailed information available is limited due to the still ongoing investigation.”

James Roy, a lieutenant for the Galveston County Sheriff ’s Office — which helped investigate the massacre — said the shooting was contained to the art rooms, and there were no English classes on that side of the school.

“The best I can tell, we have no record of (Briscoe),” Roy said.

He added that the man’s claim that the shots were “very, very loud” didn’t sound right.

“If he was anywhere other than that hallway (where the shooting took place), I don't think he could’ve heard anything but the fire alarm,” he said, referring to the alarm a teacher pulled as a warning to get people out of the school.

Briscoe was not quoted in the Houston Chronicle.

Playing victim

Public records show Briscoe had a home address in Florida at the time of the shooting. There’s no record of him living in Texas at any time.

All four news organizations that quoted him removed any reference of David Briscoe from their stories after being contacted by the Tribune.

“I don’t know what motivates people to try to take advantage of a tragedy like this,” said John Bridges, the executive editor for the Austin American-Statesman, which also quoted Briscoe in an article shortly after the shooting. “It’s sick, and it’s sad.”

It’s not uncommon for people to emerge after a high-profile disaster pretending to be a victim — often for financial gain but sometimes simply for attention. Years after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, it was revealed that a Spanish woman who claimed to be a survivor of the attack was never there.

The man calling himself David Briscoe used social media to initiate contact with some reporters, including a Tribune reporter. When the Tribune asked to interview him again in early May, he initially claimed a rogue former employee for the social media company he said he started — whom he refused to name — had stolen his identity.

Then he stopped responding to requests for comment.

Hoax continues

After the shooting at Santa Fe High, the man told the Tribune, by phone, he became isolated and depressed and began drinking heavily. He said he never tried to contact any of the other survivors. At one point, he said, he contemplated suicide, and he told a reporter he was still struggling with depression. He said he spent a couple of months at his parents’ home in New Orleans immediately after the tragedy, then returned to the Houston area for a while to live with a friend before moving to Orlando, Fla. — where he said he founded his social media company.

Half a dozen Santa Fe survivors contacted by the Tribune also said they had never heard of someone named David Briscoe.

“Who knows how many other tragedies he’s put himself in around the country?” said Flo Rice, a former Santa Fe High substitute teacher who was shot in both legs last May. “No one wants to have been there, and no one wants to have been in this club that we’re all in now.”

Media’s response

Some of the publications that quoted him said they are taking steps to avoid a similar incident.

“We have removed him from the piece, and we apologize to our readers for the misinformation,” said Steve Severinghaus, a spokesman for the Wall Street Journal. “We are reviewing how this error was made and will take steps to safeguard against this in the future.”

Bridges said a reporter from his publication first initiated contact with David Briscoe last year after seeing his social media posts — made from the same account through which he first made contact with the Tribune — about the shooting. Those posts have since been deleted, Bridges said.