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Arrest made after Tiktoks of attacks in Houston go viral
FOX 26 Reporter Abigail Dye has more on what happened.
HOUSTON - Videos showing two people sucker-punching strangers in a northwest Houston park went viral last week, making anyone who frequents Wortham Park unsettled.
"It saddens my heart on how the world has changed and people have become," said Steve who walks in the area.
The Harris County Sheriff's Office is investigating the attacks and submitted enough evidence for the district attorney to press charges on two suspects.
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Nineteen-year-old Alford Lewis and 18-year-old Kingston Miker both face an assault and robbery charge for their alleged involvement. Charging documents saying Lewis assaulted two people, pointing a gun at one of them, while Miker filmed it.
"These hashtags, prank, knockout, punch - they’re in the hundreds of millions if not billions of views," said Rania Mankarious, CEO of Crime Stoppers Houston.
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She says Crime Stoppers studies these trends and sees the flood of violent graphic videos increasing.
TikTok removes millions of videos per month from its platform, keeps track of the videos they remove, and why. The statistics are in three-month increments.
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From July to September 2022, 6.5% of the videos they removed fell under the "suicide, self-harm, and dangerous acts" category.
In October, an entirely new category was created, "Dangerous Acts and Challenges" which made up 5% of the videos removed from October to December.
From January to March 2023, that percentage grew to 5.2%.
Mankarious says this is a topic we need to be talking to kids and young adults about. She says the generations of youth making these videos, are looking for a sense of self and acclimation.
"This generation of children desire to be consumed. They want to be online, part of a viral conversation. They want to create content that trends," she said.
She says Crime Stoppers has a lot of resources to help get these conversations started, you can see them here.
"Come to us, we'll have these conversations with your kids for you, but it should be part of daily conversation," she said.