TikTok door-knock challenge turns confrontational as B.C. homeowner confronts youth

Authored by globalnews.ca and submitted by 2028W3

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A quiet Vancouver Island neighbourhood says it has been terrorized by a group of young people taking part in the TikTok door-knock challenge.

This involves banging on someone’s door, using hands or feet, and then running away without getting caught — and documenting the ordeal on the social media platform.

“It got to the point where it was frightening,” a neighbour told Global News. They wanted to be anonymous for fear of being targeted again.

“You’d be sitting in the evening watching the news and all of a sudden it would sound like the whole door was coming in, and so you’d get up to go and away they’d be running, giggling and laughing at us.”

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But last Sunday, a resident of Crown Isle in Courtenay, B.C., decided he’d had enough.

Owen May, who declined an on-camera interview, told Global News in an email that he set up a trip wire with fishing line outside his front door.

“I’m a local recreational fisherman, and I gotta catch of a lifetime (the) other night,” May told Global News by email.

“After four to four-and-a-half years of having young men coming and kicking at my door, and the doors of my neighbors, which are mainly seniors between 12 and 2 a.m., One of them (got) tangled in a piece of my fishing line I left outside my door.

May shared his porch camera footage with Global News, showing a young man approaching his door, kicking it a few times, then attempting to run away but tripping over the wire. May had pulled it tight from the other side of the door and as the teen fell down, May’s wife pounced on him.

May said an assault ensued from the altercation, which put him and his wife in the hospital.

She suffered lacerations to her eye and he received injuries to his feet and legs, he said.

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RCMP was not available to comment to Global News on the incident but an email to May, shared with Global News, said officers had identified two youths involved.

“I will be forwarding my report to Crown Counsel with recommendations of charges,” RCMP wrote to May.

“Please be advised however the Youth Criminal Justice Act provides guidelines to law enforcement and the courts in regards to charges against youth. As neither youth has any prior criminal charges or history there is a strong possibility the courts will refer it to Restorative Justice measures.”

May said he has been made aware he could be facing charges as well under section 247 (1) of the Criminal Code of Canada that states traps cannot be used that are likely to cause bodily harm.

Criminal lawyer Sarah Leamon, who is not involved with the case, told Global News that vigilante actions, such as these, are generally discouraged.

“It’s possible that there could a variety of different charges laid against a variety of different parties,” she said. “It doesn’t seem like a very clear-cut situation, it’s very complex, and so it’s going to require further police investigation to determine what’s appropriate.”

May said the fishing line was not fixed and did not lock, therefore it was not a trap.

Delta451 on March 25th, 2023 at 21:14 UTC »

If your "challenge" involves other people, it's not a challenge. It's harassment. Only acceptable things I could see as exceptions to this would be "give a random person a compliment or help" challenge.

jenk74 on March 25th, 2023 at 21:05 UTC »

My front door is kind of temperamental and has been known to blow itself open in a strong wind. I can imagine being forcibly kicked might have the same effect. If you’re on the other side of that, after rudely awakening my 130 lb dog in the middle of the night, god bless.

joefcos on March 25th, 2023 at 18:38 UTC »

https://www.vancouverislandfreedaily.com/news/video-courtenay-homeowners-hospitalized-after-tiktok-challenge-turns-ugly/

Can we stop pretending this is just innocent kids playing a game? Seriously, you all are nuts. This is a bunch of teenagers terrorizing a neighborhood for years, banging on doors at 2am, scaring people half to death. This isn't some cutesy "ring the bell and run away" game. This is kicking the door hard enough to cause damage to the frame. That would scare most people enough to call the cops. In the USA, it'd probably get you a shotgun blast through the door. NO ONE deserves to have a bunch of little ass holes doing this to them.

I'm siding with the homeowner and their neighbors on this one. The kids weren't going to stop unless you forced them to stop. Cops weren't doing anything to help, despite multiple requests from the victims in the neighborhood. They didn't kill the kids, and by all accounts they took more damage from the kids than the kids took from them. Look at the timestamp in the video. It was just barely after 0100. I can assure you that responding politely to someone kicking your door down at 1am isn't going to happen. Once the adrenaline hits your system, politeness goes right out the window.

I'm guessing a lot of the "kids will be kids" responders are young, not homeowners, and immature themselves. This shit isn't funny to people who have their lives disrupted by it. It's absolute torture. The kids aren't the victims in this in any way. They're a bunch of juvenile delinquents whose parents should be ashamed of them, and grateful someone hasn't done much worse to the little shits

Edit to add: the "booby trap" was a manually operated fishing line trip wire to slow the idiot down. Not a bear trap. Chill out about that. This isn't Home Alone