An Oklahoma mother went viral on TikTok after posting a video showing her doing active shooting drills with her 5-year-old son as he gets ready for school.
The TikTok video, which has more than a million likes, shows Cassie Walton, a 22-year-old mother of two in McAlester, Oklahoma, conducting a mock school shooting with her son Weston. In the video, she asks what she would do if she heard the principal announce a shooting over the intercom.
The video shows his son crouching in the corner of his room, demonstrating how he would hide in his classroom and use his Spider-Man flak bag as a shield to protect himself, to which Walton says, “good job.”
She also tells her son that if there is a shooter in the classroom and police officers are outside the door asking if anyone is inside, he should not respond and instead should “remain absolutely silent.” She tells her son that if she can escape, he should run as far away from the school as possible.
Walton told CBS News on Tuesday that it was important for her to teach her son that lesson “just in case.” She said that she was afraid that the exercises might scare him away from school, but that she ended up taking them seriously.
“Every time I was shooting the video, I was holding back all the tears, trying to get all of that out, and he’s very smart, and he took all the information very well, and he wasn’t afraid of the drill, he knew it was a serious situation.” Walton said. “But, you know, as a 5-year-old, he was worried about bad guys, and as a 5-year-old, he was like, ‘If I need to, I’ll karate him.’ 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 seriously.”
Walton told CBS News that she was surprised by the attention her video received. She said she was inspired to buy the $140 bulletproof backpack insert after seeing another mom post it online.
“Honestly, when it comes to protecting your children, no amount of money is too much,” Walton said. “I wish it wasn’t necessary, and I wish we could find a better solution.”
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Source: www.cbsnews.com