A man who claimed he survived a deadly school shooting in Texas and went on to give a myriad of interviews retelling how he heroically barricaded classroom doors and tried save his students has been exposed as a fraud who wasn’t even there.
The man, who identified himself as David Briscoe, claimed he was a substitute teacher at Santa Fe High School in Texas in May 2018 when a teenage gunman opened fire, killing 10 people and injuring 13.
He gave interviews to Time, CNN and the Wall Street Journal painting a horrific scene where he ordered his students to ‘get down’ and described the blood-curdling screams of his pupils.
But according to the Santa Fe Independent School District, he was never there.
His hoax unraveled Monday morning when the Texas Tribune published a piece exposing him after they interviewed him in April, found holes in his telling and launched an investigation.
A man who identified himself as David Briscoe claimed he survived the deadly Santa Fe High School shooting May 2018 and gave a myriad of interviews retelling how he heroically barricaded classroom doors and tried save his students. But he’s been exposed as a fraud who wasn’t even there. Mourners pictured at a vigil for the Santa Fe shooting above
He gave interviews to Time, CNN and the Wall Street Journal painting a horrific scene where he ordered his students to ‘get down’ and described the blood-curdling screams of his pupils. The shooting scene above
The school district announced they have no record of anyone named David Briscoe ever being employed by the district. They said they’re 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,’ the district tells DailyMail.com
‘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,’ the district added.
The Tribune interviewed him in April, but soon realized his story wasn’t truthful.
‘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,’ the paper wrote.
He claimed that he protected dozens of students in his English class in a certain part of campus. An investigation found that the shooting took place in 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],’ James Roy, a lieutenant for the Galveston County Sheriff’s Office found.
Roy discounted Briscoe’s claims that he heard ‘very, very loud’ gunshots.
‘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,’ Roy said.
Public records for Briscoe show he had a home address in Florida at the time of the shooting and there’s no record of him living in Texas at any time.
The man who claimed to be named Briscoe had initiated his contact with reporters using social media. He reached out to the Tribune using the Twitter handle @daviddbriscoe in April asking to discuss his role in the Texas tragedy.
But by May that Twitter user claimed his accounts were hacked and he had never released any interviews.
The man who claimed to be named Briscoe had initiated his contact with reports using the Twitter handle @daviddbriscoe. On the page he’s described as a Florida-based Harvard grad, his websites says he’s a pastor. The Twitter page has since been deleted
He reached out to the Tribune using the Twitter handle @daviddbriscoe in April asking to discuss his role in the Texas tragedy
But when a reporter reached out again to Briscoe in May, he seemed clueless about any communication or interview with the newspaper
In the interview Briscoe said after the Santa Fe High shooting he felt depressed and began to drink heavily and never tried to contact other survivors. He claimed he contemplated suicide and admitted he was struggling with depression and that he moved to his parents’ home in New Orleans then to Texas then Orlando, Florida where he founded a social media company.
He also claimed that he gave a speech at Colonial High School where the principal honored him and he spoke about how lawmakers could prevent future shootings. However, a spokeswoman for Colonial High says no one named David Briscoe ever came to their school to speak.
After the April 25 interview things went silent on Briscoe’s end. In May he returned to social media and responded to a DM from a Tribune reporter saying he had never spoken to them before and was confused about their message.
The reporter then showed him the email, phone number and screen shots of initial DM messages they shared a month prior.
Dimitrios Pagourtzis, 17, was charged with capital murder for the deadly shooting at Santa Fe High School in Texas that killed 10
The man said that one of his employees of his social media company had impersonated him adding that someone, likely that same employee, had stolen his identity nearly one year prior. He didn’t disclose the name of the impersonator but said that they were arrested.
When approached in June by the Tribune he said: ‘We do not want [to] be in the middle of all of this. Again, my identity was already stolen, I do not want to be potentially targeted again.’
‘I have never lived in Texas. I have only lived in Florida. I’ve been living here practically my whole life,’ he added.
After that the DMs on his Twitter were disabled and phone calls went to voicemail.
Since the report, CNN, Time and The Wall Street Journal have updated their shooting coverage and removed Briscoe’s quotes from their stories.
This isn’t the first time that people have tried to capitalize on tragedy, whether for fame or financial means.
Years after 9/11, it was revealed that a Spanish woman who claimed to survive the terror attacks was never actually there.