12-year-old Houston honorary officer bullied at Houston gas station

In the viral video posted the week of June 10, a group of young people could be seen yelling at DJ in a gas station parking lot. He said people in the video made jokes and laughed at his haircut, his uniform and even took away his flashlight at that point. They can be seen dancing and shouting “stop us!” » to the DJ.

“Actually, to them it didn’t seem like they were bullying me, but just the fact that I’m a kid and they were doing it in front of me made me feel like I was being bullied.” , he told the Chronicle on Monday.

DJ’s father, Theodis Daniel, said he was talking to other people at the gas station about DJ’s accomplishments before he noticed the group surrounding him and had to intervene. Daniel said his son had become accustomed to people making fun of him and told his father that he wanted to teach them a lesson by educating them.

“Maybe they won’t be so quick to judge anymore,” Daniel said. “People can sit and just talk, but listen a little more with their ears, we won’t have any problems.”

DJ said he worried when people made fun of him because he was afraid too much stress would land him in the hospital. Daniel said DJ had 13 brain operations that resulted in hair loss and scarring from tumor removal.

“We’re used to all this frenzied behavior and so it’s nothing we’re not used to,” Daniel said. “Whenever they see him in his uniform, he laughs a lot, some of them may ridicule him and make jokes about him. Often he doesn’t want me to intervene; he prefers to do it himself .

The viral video sparked thousands of comments in support of DJ and caught the attention of Matthews, who said she responded to let people know “we are not going to tolerate or normalize this type of behavior.”

“I was completely disgusted because that’s how the bullying starts and they make fun of this kid not knowing he’s a cancer survivor, I was completely upset and had to say something thing about it,” Matthews said.

Daniel and DJ said they have no hatred towards anyone in this situation, but just want the response to the video to be a lesson learned.

“Honestly from this video I would just tell them to stop being mean and before you post something you need to ask permission,” DJ said. “You never know if you’re going to post something and if you might get in trouble, so what’s the point of posting it anyway.”