No shooting at Los Angeles Southwest College: Football team coach clarifies amid reports on social media

Social media reports of a shooting at Los Angeles Southwest College on August 21 appear to be unfounded. The college's football team coach issued a clarification on X.

“There was not a shooting at Los Angeles Southwest College tonight. Fake news. Tonight's game between Kingdrew and San Pedro High School,” Steven Lewis wrote.

Coach Lewis' post comes amid several claims about a possible shooting at the Los Angeles Southwest College.

“Hearing about some sort of evacuation taking place Los Angeles SouthWest College. Anyone know what’s up? Heard there’s a football game going on as well,” one page had noted . Another remarked “A bunch of people were running and then what sounded like a gunshot went off. Sheriffs secured the area within a few minutes.” One person wrote that the Citizen app had noted it was a shooting, but this could not be verified.

Another said “Evacuations Underway After Shots Fired Near Football Field at Los Angeles Southwest College!”. A local alerts page with over 180,000 followers also wrote “Imperial/Budlong: Shots fired during a football game at Southwest College. LASD trying to get the crowd out of the area.” Another page shared this saying “Possible shots fired during a San Pedro vs. King Drew high school football game at Los Angeles Southwest College (near Imperial Highway and Budlong Avenue in South LA).” The first post now appears to have been deleted, but a screenshot has been attached for the same.

Shuvrajit has over seven years of experience covering US, India, and world news. An English Literature postgraduate from Jadavpur University, Shuvrajit started off covering entertainment, gaming and all things pop culture. There were brief periods away from the media industry, with short stints in content marketing, ed-tech and academic editing. However, the newsroom beckoned and over the last few jobs, Shuvrajit has exceedingly focused on team functioning as well, including tracking news and assigning tasks, working on everyday breaking news, framing detailed coverage plans, and creating immersive and data-driven stories. In his time as a digital journalist, he has covered a Lok Sabha election, multiple state elections, Union Budgets and award ceremonies. He has also helped in planning content for company event panels in the past. For work, Shuvrajit enjoys dabbling with data visualization, editing tools, and AI chatbots and attempts to incorporate AI workflows in everyday tasks. He is deeply interested in geopolitics, sports, films and music. Prompting is a new fascination for Shuvrajit now. Apart from that, he can be found doom-scrolling, sharing memes, or cheering on his favorite football team. Read More