‘It’s criminal’: Longueuil woman believes her vehicle was tampered with in ‘lug nut challenge’

A Longueuil woman says her family vehicle was tampered with, and she believes it was because of a dangerous social media trend.

Line Huot tells CityNews her son took the family vehicle to school one morning – Champlain College – and it was making a “funny noise” on the drive back.

When he got back home, the family discovered all the lug nuts on the front left tire had been loosened.

“It’s scary. It’s very scary,” said Huot.

Huot believes the wheel was tampered with as part of the so-called “lug nut challenge,” an alleged social media trend linked to TikTok believed to involve people filming themselves loosening or entirely removing lug nuts on parked vehicles.

“That’s what they do, supposedly; they post it on TikTok to get likes,” said Huot. “It’s crazy. They have no sense of responsibility, no sense of what could happen. They probably don’t own a car. They don’t know, they just don’t know. It’s not possible that they know and do it on purpose. It’s criminal.”

Searches for the harmful challenge on TikTok redirects users to safety information. The social media giant has said it does not allow content promoting dangerous behaviour, and it has not confirmed “lug nut challenge”-related content has ever appeared on its platform.

The social media trend was thrust back in the spotlight in Quebec this week following the sudden death of 37-year-old Justyn Ingram, who was killed Monday evening after a tire flew off an oncoming vehicle on Highway 15 in Brossard and struck the van he was in.

The Sûreté du Québec has not confirmed whether it is investigating a possible connection to the “lug nut challenge.” In fact, police forces across Canada have been warning people about the challenge for months now, but no police agency has directly confirmed a link between reported incidents and the challenge.

READ MORE: Quebec drivers warn of loose lug nuts amid social media challenge concerns

Huot did not report her own incident to police, though her son did report it to security at Champlain College. He felt they weren’t taking him seriously, and he never followed up with them.

“He said, ‘this is what happened. I can show you on Google Maps where my car was exactly. And you can look with your cameras and see what happened,’” Huot recounted. “So they said, ‘we’re going to look and come back in an hour.’ They didn’t take his name. They didn’t want to even look at where he was parked. And he was frustrated and he was thinking to himself, ‘I’m not an idiot. I mean, come on. In an hour, you’re going to look at six hours of video.’ He never went back to the security guards. He just said, ‘enough.’ He didn’t want to be taken for a fool. So that was it.”

Huot went on to post about what happened in a few Longueuil Facebook groups because she wanted people to be aware.

“And you wouldn’t even believe the amount of people that said, ‘it happened to me or it happened to somebody.’

“It’s everywhere.”

Huot is urging people to be aware of the possibility their lug nuts may be loosened – and how to check for that.

“You know what? You can’t see it,” she said. “My spouse, he had to touch them to know that they were loose. You can’t even see it. You can’t tell just by walking around. You have to touch the nuts and make sure that they are tight. And if they’re not tight, goodness gracious, don’t take the car. Don’t take the car.”