Lollapalooza safety guard arrested, accused of faking mass capturing menace “to go away work early”
A safety guard who labored at this yr’s version of Lollapalooza has been charged with making a false terrorist menace, after allegedly circulating an nameless textual content messages which indicated a mass capturing was going to happen on the competition.
18-year-old Janya Williams is accused of sending her supervisor an nameless textual content message shortly earlier than 3pm on the second day of the Chicago competition on Friday (July 29). Utilizing the textual content message platform TextNow, it allegedly learn: “Mass capturing at 4pm location Lollapalooza. We’ve 150 targets.”
As NBC Chicago stories, prosecutors allege that Williams additionally instructed her supervisor that her sister had seen a submit a few mass capturing being deliberate for the occasion on Fb. It’s alleged that Williams then created a faux Fb web page below the identify Ben Scott, wrote a submit saying there could be a capturing on the Lollapalooza website at 6pm, and despatched a screenshot to her supervisor.
Chicago police and the FBI Joint Counterterrorism Process Pressure had been notified, and, in response to prosecutors, investigators quickly found the Apple iCloud account and IP deal with of the TextNow quantity used to ship the threatening message belonged to Williams. It’s alleged that in questioning, Williams admitted to sending the message and making the faux Fb submit “as a result of she needed to go away work early”.
Williams’ cost of creating a false terrorist menace is a felony. On Sunday (July 31), Cook dinner County Choose Mary Marubio set her bail at $50,000. Williams is due again in court docket on Monday (July 8).
This yr’s version of Lollapalooza featured a line-up that included the likes of Metallica, Dua Lipa, J. Cole, Inexperienced Day, Machine Gun Kelly, The KID LAROI, Charli XCX and extra. Tomorrow X Collectively made historical past as the primary Ok-pop act to carry out on the competition, whereas BTS‘ J-Hope was the primary Ok-pop artist to headline a serious music competition within the US.
On the opening day of the competition, a bunch of activists protested Chicago’s 10pm weekend curfew for folks below the age of 18 outdoors the occasion’s website. Elsewhere, Metallica jammed with Stranger Issues star Joseph Quinn backstage on the competition.