MANILA, Philippines – Why did the suspects in the fatal Tacloban City school shooting open fire?
As investigators continue to piece together what led to the attack that left three people dead, the Department of Justice (DOJ) is looking beyond the bullying angle for answers.
“The DOJ is also looking into the possibility that this was not a simple bullying incident. They also point to a larger trend or pattern of extremism. I think to downplay the discourse to just a simple bullying incident would be to downplay the whole issue entirely,” Department of Justice spokesperson Polo Martinez said on Tuesday, reported by GMA.
The statement adds weight to concerns that the Tacloban shooting may not be an isolated incident, but part of a disturbing trend that authorities have been tracking for months: the online grooming and radicalization of Filipino minors toward acts of violence.
Long before the Tacloban shooting, the Philippine National Police Anti-Cybercrime Group (PNP-ACG) had already warned lawmakers about a series of cases involving children allegedly influenced through online platforms.
During a Senate hearing in April, PNP-ACG Deputy Director Colonel Romeo Desiderio disclosed that authorities had conducted five rescue operations involving 12 minors who had allegedly been groomed and radicalized online. Two of those incidents ended in fatalities.
The first occurred in October 2025 in Marikina, when a student reportedly took his father’s licensed firearm to school, pointed it at a classmate, then at himself, and discharged the weapon while joking. The student later died in the hospital.
The second happened in February in Batangas, where a student brought a caliber .45 handgun to school, fired twice into a classroom floor, and then shot himself dead.
Authorities also foiled a planned school shooting in Calabarzon in February involving seven minors allegedly radicalized online. At the time, Desiderio said police were monitoring seven additional cases.
According to the PNP-ACG, many of the documented cases involved contact through Roblox, a gaming platform with social and messaging features that allow users to communicate with one another. They have also observed the pattern of communications moving to other platforms like Facebook Messenger, Discord, or Telegram.
“It goes back to nihilistic violent extremism,” Desiderio told senators.
Roblox, under fire at the time, vowed changes such as stricter monitoring, improved reporting mechanisms, and age-appropriate content controls. The PNP-ACG also told the Senate they would continue to monitor online spaces, including gaming platforms, through dedicated cyber patrol operations.
So for a time, the concerns grew quiet. But these have reawakened after the Tacloban school shooting, with a different game being identified as an influencing factor, Gorebox.
A growing extremist subculture
Globally, researchers have increasingly warned about the rise of nihilistic violent extremism, or NVE, a loose online subculture that glorifies violence not in pursuit of a traditional political or religious objective, but as an end in itself.
The Global Network on Extremism and Technology (GNET) defines NVE as violence committed to fulfill fundamentally misanthropic goals or to gain status within online communities that celebrate harm.
In these spaces, acts of violence can function as a form of social currency.
Researchers say groomers often seek out vulnerable young people experiencing social isolation or mental health struggles. Through online interactions, they gradually normalize violent content and encourage increasingly extreme behavior.
“NVE groups have been known to deliberately target young people, particularly those who are vulnerable or experiencing personal issues,” GNET wrote.
One of the most notorious networks associated with this trend is 764, which the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD) describes as a loose transnational collection of online groups involved in sextortion, abuse, and the glorification of violence.
While 764 initially became known for producing child sexual abuse material and coercing victims, researchers say parts of the network have increasingly shifted toward promoting violent acts. Following leadership changes in 2025 (which involves some people aligned with an NVE group “No Lives Matter”) reports linked individuals associated with the network to multiple violent incidents in the United States, including a stabbing, arson, and a disrupted mass-shooting plot.
Authorities in the Philippines have not publicly identified which groups, if any, may have been involved in the grooming cases documented by the PNP but have said that most suspected groomers appear to be based abroad, with only one identified locally.
In one earlier operation, the PNP found a shirt associated with “No Lives Matter,” pointing to possible influence by online NVE groups.
Researchers warn that nihilistic violent extremist movements can spread rapidly because they often do not require complex ideological indoctrination. The exchange is simpler: commit a violent act, and gain infamy and belongingness in the group. In 764, for instance, one of the ways to gain status within the group is by committing an act of violence, ISD found.
The Tacloban connection
In the Tacloban case, regional police have said the suspects may have been influenced by Gorebox, a game known for its graphic violence.
It has also been tagged in separate incidents elsewhere in the world. In January 2026, Singapore caught a 14-year-old boy recreating ISIS attacks in Gorebox and Roblox, vowing to become a martyr for the group. Just a month earlier, in Moscow, a 15-year-old boy had recreated a 2011 Norway terror attack in Gorebox, before stabbing to death a 10-year-old child.
But in its analysis of the Moscow attack, GNET also warned against simply blaming the game and its content: “We should view the crucial digital element of this attack’s context through the attacker’s behaviours in the group chat and his use of the gaming space, rather than attaching them to the game itself.”
What the report is saying is that the significance of Gorebox may lie less in its violent content than in its ability to connect users. While Gorebox in March 2026 removed its multiplayer online functions, citing technical reasons, an official Discord server remains where players may still be able to communicate.
Despite the police’s mention of Gorebox and its “temporary” ban, authorities have not publicly established whether the Tacloban suspects were groomed online, whether they had contact with extremist communities, or whether any organized group was involved in the attack.
Online observers have also noted that one of the suspects appeared to be wearing a shirt referencing the German industrial band called KMFDM, a group whose imagery has long circulated within some school-shooting subcultures after the Columbine attackers in 1999 had “cited the band’s lyrics,” according to CNN.
KMFDM has since condemned the Columbine attack, and vowed that their music stands against violence.
While the shirt observation alone proves nothing about motive or affiliation, it has fueled speculation about possible online NVE grooming, given that in 2024, a separate 15-year-old shooter in the US had also worn the same band shirt like one of the Tacloban suspects.
Beyond discussions on criminal liability, the case also raises questions on social isolation, parental supervision, and the ability of online platforms to protect young users from manipulation.
And if the concerns raised by the DOJ prove well-founded, the Tacloban shooting may represent more than just an isolated local crime. It may be a clear warning that online extremist networks targeting children are no longer a problem Filipinos hear about only from overseas headlines, raising questions on what measures the country can take to put a stop to these. – Rappler.com
