Octavio Jones/Getty Images
- Videos showing the scene outside Brian Laundrie's family home are going viral.
- Protestors and members of the media have been filling the streets and lawn of the Florida home.
- TikTok videos of the police visiting the home have pulled in millions of views.
- Visit Insider's homepage for more stories.
Footage from outside Brian Laundrie's home is going viral online amid massive public attention on the disappearance of 22-year-old Gabby Petito.
The FBI searched Laundrie's home on Monday after Florida police labeled him a person of interest in Petito's disappearance. A lawyer for Petito's family confirmed to Insider on Tuesday that her remains were found in Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming.
News outlets and social media users started posting footage and images from outside his North Port, Florida family home on Friday afternoon after his parents reported him missing. That evening, the scene quickly swelled to around 80 people, about half being media, according to Evan Axelback of Tampa Bay Fox affiliate station Fox 13.
Axelback tweeted footage of a protester yelling into a bullhorn while others chanted "where is Gabby."
CBS 12, a local CBS affiliate in West Palm Beach, reported that one man drove "back and forth in the street in a golf cart" and children held signs that read "Bring Gabby home," "Where is Gabby?" and "The truth will come out, where is she?"
-Evan Axelbank Fox13 (@EvanAxelbank) September 18, 2021
Laundrie's home continued to pull in masses of onlookers and media personnel over the weekend and into this week. A Facebook user live-streamed from the property on Sunday night, showing reporters and protesters sitting in the family's driveway. The footage now has more than 300,000 views.
On Monday, when FBI agents executed a search warrant on Laundrie's home, several videos capturing footage at the scene spread on TikTok. User @NerdyAddict posted multiple videos showing agents arriving at the scene and bringing Laurie's family out to their car, pulling in over 4 million views in total.
Some online have criticized media outlets for outsized coverage of the story. On Sunday, Fox News guest Raymond Arroyo described the story as "a huge distraction" and said compared the story to a Lifetime movie.
Others have noticed the lack of coverage when it comes to marginalized people, particularly women of color, who go missing without this level of attention. According to a report from the Missing and Murdered Indigenous People Task Force, 710 indigenous people have gone missing in Wyoming from 2011 to 2020. In New York and New Jersey, over 50 Black teenagers aged 15 to 19, have dissapeared according to a May report from the Amsterdam News.
Tweets and TikToks criticizing the attention on Petito, who was white, have gone viral.
"If there was media coverage like this for all the other missing people, there would be a huge chance for others to be found too," Twitter account @girletmetellyou wrote on Sunday, pulling in over 275,000 likes.
-toxic tila tequila (@girletmetellyou) September 19, 2021
A TikTok from the user @what.avez on TikTok has over 22,000 views and said those covering the story on social media have become "desensitized" and acted like the case was a true-crime "podcast" to solve.
Read more stories from Insider's Digital Culture desk.