Student Teacher Sent a Private Snapchat Complaining About Her Workday. An Hour Later, Police Pulled Up to Her School.

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.

Why would you even joke about shooting someone or committing a school shooting? Not saying what Snapchat did was right, but she kinda asked for it in my opinion.

Because humor is a survival mechanism. Joking about extremely serious things helps us through hard times.

That’s why some people laugh when they’re upset or angry. That’s why people mime blowing their brains out. That’s why people make suicide jokes or “Don’t come to work tomorrow” or fucking 9/11 jokes.

Like, you wanna be upset about a school shooting joke that was told to people in confidence, that’s fucking insane. Fuck off.