‘I’m sick of being silent’: Gay teen catches bullies on camera in viral TikTok video – 7NEWS
California high school senior Landon Jones, 18, said he’s been bullied by his classmates since the fifth grade. But Jones, who is openly gay, said he’s no longer looking the other way.
“I have been called ‘f****t’ countless times at school, and it literally doesn’t bother me at all,” Jones said in a TikTok video shared October 1 that has since gone viral. “The fact that they came to my house does.”
WATCH THE VIDEO ABOVE: Teen harassed by schoolmates for his sexuality.
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The video, which now has 1.3 million views, appears to show two separate instances of Jones being subjected to anti-gay bullying. In the more recent incident, which occurred September 29 and was caught on a home surveillance camera, a young man can be seen walking up to Jones’ home and starting to knock before Jones’ father opens the door.
“Does Landon live here?” the young man can be heard saying.
His dad responds, “Yes, why?”
“Someone said to come up here,” the young man can be heard mumbling, before loudly yelling, “because he’s a f****t!” and running off the property.
Jones’ dad said the young man ran off and got in on the passenger side of a black Lincoln Navigator before it drove off.
“I remember being up in my room, hearing it, and I heard what he said. I immediately jumped out of bed and walked outside to see what was happening,” Jones, who came out as gay in 2020, told NBC News. “I had no sleep that night. I was honestly really upset. I was crying”.
The other incident that can be seen in Jones’ now-viral TikTok video was recorded by Jones in August and shows a group of young men surrounding Jones’ car, as he and his sister sat inside, in a Starbucks car park. One of the men can be seen looking inside Jones’ car and can be heard saying, “This f****** f****t”.
Jones told NBC News that he decided to share both incidents on TikTok, where he has nearly 700,000 followers, because “I’m sick of being silent about it. So I finally spoke up.”
Jones said the young man who’s visible in the Starbucks video and the person who was driving the black Lincoln Navigator both attend his high school, El Toro High School in Lake Forest, California, which is part of the Saddleback Valley Unified School District. He said he had heard from others that the young man who came up to his front door attends a nearby high school, though he does not know which one and could not confirm the accuracy of that information.
A spokesperson for the school district said the “unconscionable acts committed against Landon Jones do not reflect the feelings or values of Saddleback Valley Unified School District (SVUSD) and El Toro High School (ETHS)”.