Rare bug? iPod Touch only freezes, crashes, and restarts after someone sent me 20 texts...

Someone sent me over 20 texts at one time...and now I can't even use my iPod Touch at all. I can't even make it past the home screen before the iPod freezes, crashes, and restarts. It's an endless cycle that won't stop even after I tried a hard restart (hold home and lock buttons, then only home button).

I've figured out that it only freezes as soon as the iPod "registers" that I have 20+ new messages. Turning the iPod to airplane mode does not help either, and I can't get a stable enough connection to a PC with a USB cord to try to sync any of the information to iTunes.

This is where I need your help. You can talk about how I am irresponsible for not syncing to iTunes or iCloud, but that still doesn't change the fact that I have information that I want to recover from that device.

I think that my problem here lies with something similar mentioned in this article about a "rare bug" that crashes your iPhone if you get too many messages from a while back (from the IOS 6 days). https://www.yahoo.com/news/why-too-many-imessages-crash-iphone-235210593.html?re f=gs

So basically now I am short of trying to put this iPod in DFU mode and completely wiping it (since I can't even sync with iTunes now), but I would rather not have to resort to this.

Is there anyway to get rid of these messages?

Help please?