Sickening video of schoolgirls filmed for Snapchat ‘f ight club’
From the random punch dealt to an unsuspecting boy, to young girls pummelling each other, these are some of the shocking videos and images that have been captured by mobile phone – and then spread among a wider audience by way of the popular social media
SCHOOLCHILDREN are trying to emulate notorious MMA fighter Conor McGregor in street-based ‘fight clubs’ in broad daylight that are being videoed and uploaded to the social media forum Snapchat.
Violent videos of teenagers fighting each other in Limerick have emerged. They were uploaded anonymously and, like all Snapchat messages, are deleted automatically after 24 hours.
One account on the platform was shut down this week, and a second account bearing a similar name was also shut down.
The fights, which show a number of local landmarks and identifiable school crests on the uniforms of some of the pupils involved, are extremely violent.
The videos and images show one boy kneeing another in the head in one video, while another shows a young boy falling to the floor after receiving a blow to the head; a third shows two girls punching each other and pulling each other’s hair.
Clare Fianna Fáil councillor Cathal Crowe said he lodged a complaint with gardaí in Limerick after viewing the violent videos uploaded by anonymous Snapchat user ‘Irish Drillting’.
Primary school teacher Mr Crowe told the Irish Mail on Sunday he believes some young pupils are influenced by McGregor and are trying to ‘emulate’ the mixed martial artist.
‘The guy who is running this page is putting up posts saying “Please send me in more vids”, so there’s a supply and demand,’ Mr Crowe said.
‘There’s a particularly nasty one that went up of two girls absolutely laying into each other, pulling hair and closed fist punching. Another one of them happens in the sports hall of a school and two guys were putting on boxing gloves – they’re absolutely bating each other and the whole class have their phones out.’
In addition to fights, the Snapchat account has been sharing videos of youths attacking innocent bystanders.
‘It was 50% attacks and 50% fights and now it’s just 100% fights, but there was a horrible one at the weekend of a kid playing his PlayStation, two hands on the console, and in sprints another teenager and fullon punches him. The kid drops to the ground and there was kicks to his head in the end,’ Mr Crowe explained. ‘Just horrendous, horrendous.’
Meanwhile, a spate of serious injuries have been reported worldwide by people attempting the ‘Bird Box challenge’, inspired by a recent movie, whereby participants place themselves in dangerous situations and navigate their way out of them while blindfolded, with onlookers filming the results and uploading them to social media. Mr Crowe said legislation is needed to keep pace with social media technology. He cited the sharing of graphic video of a recent fatal crash on Dublin’s M50.
‘In light of what happened, there really is an urgent need to highlight our social media laws which are non-existent. We’re a decade of social media down the road and we’ve nothing, nothing.’
He acknowledged that people have long fallen prey to ‘a primitive kind of voyeurism’. ‘Only recently I was showing my class an old painting of Robert Emmet being hanged in the 1800s and the throngs that were there to witness the hanging and I think there’s always going to be that primitive kind of voyeurism of humans: if there’s a fight, people will cross the street to see it. I think this stuff is playing out on social media.’
A Garda spokesman told the MoS: ‘We have made numerous enquiries in relation to this matter and to date no report has been made to gardaí. However, if anyone has been a victim of any assault, we would urge them to contact their local Garda station and the matter will be investigated fully.’
‘Kids being told, “Please send in more vids”’ ‘Beating each other as others have phones out’