51-year-old Jeremy Garnier was arrested Monday night and charged with making terrorist threats during a livestream on Facebook while wearing Joker makeup.
via NYDN:
The hour-long livestream features the University City man dressed as the iconic Batman villain — right down to the exaggerated lipstick — at the Blueberry Hill bar and restaurant in University City, then the St. Louis Galleria and driving around Delmar Loop.
“Yes I’m doing this for attention, but the attention I seek is to take over the world,” he says in the video. “I’m going to start killing people until this reaches a thousand (viewers), and once it reaches a thousand, I’m going to go out in public and I’m going to kill more. We’re not going to go to any movie theaters. We’re going to go totally unarmed because we don’t want to alert the authorities into thinking we might be on an actual rampage.”
At one point, a bartender offers Garnier a drink and he orders a Sprite.
“Yeah, I can’t be inebriated when I’m planning on, you know, killing a bunch of people,” he said. “It’s not something you can do. I’m live on Facebook right now. I’ve got like nearly 2,000 people watching me.”
He also talks repeatedly about the opioid crisis.
“Yes, I’m doing this for attention,” he says. “But the attention I seek is to take over the world with a new concept: That opiates aren’t cool.”
Garnier was arrested around 8:15 p.m., still streaming live, after witnesses complained of a disturbance, according to police.
The Facebook video, which is still online, has about 56,000 views as of 8 a.m. Thursday.
But despite the threats, Garnier claims it was all performance art.
“While this was undoubtedly not Jeremy’s best decision considering the consequences … he was not threatening anyone,” a GoFundMe set up for him reads. “As he says … he was chasing ‘clout’… trying to increase his Facebook viewers and bring attention to the opiate crisis plaguing this country.”
Garnier has been charged with a first-degree felony charge of making a terrorist threat and is being held without bond.
It’s 2020. You can’t just be on Facebook as a white man in Joker makeup making threats about anything — real or not.
