Staffer For NYC Senator Likes Tweet Mocking Parkland Teen

BROOKLYN, NY — A staffer for a South Brooklyn state senator is under fire for liking a tweet criticizing a teen who survived the recent high school shooting in Florida. John Seravalli, a special assistant to Sen. Marty Golden, gave an online nod of approval to a Feb. 25 tweet calling the teen, David Hogg, "a weak phony loser."

Pro-gun control activists in Golden's Bay Ridge district say liking the tweet indicates Seravalli is sympathetic to conspiracy theories saying the vocal teens from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School are actors in a plot to impose stricter gun laws.

It reflects badly on the Republican senator, they said, who should apologize for Seravalli or publicly reprimand him.

"These kids just went to school for the first time again today and it’s incredibly, incredibly mean-spirited," Kristen Pettit, a Bay Ridge resident and founding member of the nationwide gun violence prevention group Moms Demand Action, told Patch Thursday.

Some right-wing activists have sought to portray Hogg, 17, as a "crisis actor" paid to push for gun control after 17 people at his school were killed on Feb. 14. The websites InfoWars and Gateway Pundit have falsely alleged that Hogg was reciting scripted lines when appearing on TV.

The tweet Seravalli liked doesn't explicitly espouse those theories. The post from Jordan Rachel, an actress and model, says Hogg's "15 minutes of fame ran out" when he expressed sympathy for sheriff's deputies who stood outside the Parkland, Florida, high school as Nikolas Cruz gunned down students and staff inside.

"HAHA what a weak phony loser," Rachel tweeted, adding an emoji and the hashtag "#GoBackToCNN."

Mallory McMahon, a co-founder of the progressive activist group Fight Back Bay Ridge, said Seravalli's liking the tweet reflects a disturbing attitude from a staffer in the taxpayer-funded office of an elected official. Seravalli is paid $1,600 every two weeks, according to Senate records.

“It’s engaging with NRA-sponsored conspiracy theories," McMahon said. "It’s engaging a child on the internet to harm and discredit him. I mean, leave that kid alone."

Seravalli did not immediately respond to a voicemail left at his Brooklyn office Thursday morning. A spokesman for Golden also did not respond to emails seeking comment.

But Seravalli appeared to rebut criticism from McMahon's group with a now-deleted Wednesday evening tweet.

Fight Back Bay Ridge posted a tweet saying Seravalli "thinks it's OK to like conspiracy theory/crisis actor posts mocking Parkland kid." About an hour and 20 minutes later, Seravalli tweeted, "I don't think it's OK, I know it's OK." The post was deleted later Wednesday evening.

Seravalli also liked tweets from Fight Back Bay Ridge and others that appeared to criticize him.

The tweet flap comes as Golden and other Albany lawmakers debate how to prevent a mass shooting in New York. GOP senators on Wednesday rejected four bills proposed by Democrats that would strengthen background checks, ban "bump stocks" that turn semiautomatic guns into machine guns, and let courts keep guns away from people at risk of hurting others.

Golden has pushed for installing body scanners and stationing law-enforcement offiers in schools in the wake of the Parkland massacre. The scanners would help keep dangerous weapons such as knives and brass knuckles out of schools in addition to guns, Golden said in a video posted online Tuesday.

"We need to protect our students without making them feel as if they're passing through a TSA checkpoint on the way to class. This technology does just that," Golden said.

(Lead image: David Hogg, a survivor of the Feb. 14 mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, speaks in New Jersey on Feb. 25. Photo by Rich Schultz/Associated Press)