A local mall in Miami, Florida the focus of a wild viral hoax on social media after reports of “shadow aliens” descending on the locale to cause havoc and take over the mall. According to CBS News, police had to clear the air and respond to the scene, but they made clear that the response was not out of this world.
“There were no aliens, UFOs or ETs. No airports were closed no power outages,” Officer Michael Vega said, according to CBS News Miami. The cause of the mayhem was actually the equally wild brawl between “50 juveniles” at the Bayside Marketplace.
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“We were just watching a movie with the door open because it was really nice out. We heard a lot of successive shots or pops, I don’t want to say exactly for sure right after new years, it could have been fireworks, I’m not sure. So we go out there and there were just tons of people running. Immediately, not long after that, police cars were showing up, super loud, there were about ten of them and an ambulance,” a resident of the area near the area told CBS News. “There’s a big crowd of people running outside of Bayside and then we hear a commotion and now they’re just running through the streets, running between cars, almost getting hit by cars, it was absolute chaos.”
Video of the scene showed a large group of people who were allegedly behind vandalism in several stores and were beating a driver who had a bottle thrown at his car. Four of the teens involved were arrested, with two facing charges of burglary, grand theft, battery and resisting arrest without violence. The other pair were only charged with resisting an officer without violence.
Still, folks online ran with the aliens story and had some fun with it on social media. Some other video posted showing the scene also seems to show a tall “creature” standing in front of the entrance of the mall. “Everybody have cell phones, but nobody have an up close video of the 8-10 foot alien by the Miami mall?” one user on X (formerly Twitter) wrote.
The topic took over the trending tab on X (formerly Twitter), people couldn’t resist the urge to joke, and now here we are, writing about it. Imagine how the real aliens will feel when they see how we’ve been reacting to fiction.
