PASCO COUNTY, FlaAlexa Obregon is dialed in to social media, but Friday she wanted nothing to do with Instagram.
"I wanted to scream and throw my phone,” she said, after she and her deceased cousin’s pictures were tagged in the Instagram account, DestroyPascoTeens101.
Her picture had a nasty caption, but she says what was written about her cousin crossed the line.
"It was my cousin that passed away, he was 13 when he passed away from cancer,” she said.
The caption made fun of her cousin for not having hair— he was going through chemo when the photo was taken. Obregon’s brother posted the picture to his instagram account on the one year anniversary of his death.
"She dropped her phone and tears just came running down her eyes,” said Michelle Obregon, Alexa’s mom.
They messaged the person and demanded they take the picture and account down. They did, but then a second account, DestroyPascoTeensPt2 popped up and tagged even more students with even more intimidating and crude comments.
The Pasco County School District superintendent says that Instagram account is just another reason why it’s so important to hold anti-bullying summits. They’ve done Together We Standfor the last six years. The 2018 summit was Monday.
"It’s just inappropriate behavior,” said Kurt Browning, the Superintendent of Schools in Pasco County.
"It’s just a crazy world in which we live in, where people have this freedom to post whatever they want on social media,” he said.
Obregon thinks the person behind all of this may be hurt, too.
"Speak with someone. I really feel like they need to speak with someone. It could be something that was done hurtful to them and they’re back lashing,” said Obregon.
She's is in touch with the Sheriff's office and hopes to find out who's behind it.
The Sheriff's office says its cyber crimes unit has ways of getting that information, but tells people to take screenshots and document these types of situations as much as you can, so they have plenty of evidence.
