Minor arrested for threatening US Open of Surfing

A 16-year-old boy was arrested in Huntington Beach following threats he made against the US Open of Surfing via social media. Under suspicion of making a terrorist threat, police acquired a warrant and arrested the unnamed minor at his home on friday night, where they confiscated a shotgun and a handgun, both of which were registered legally to family members. While the teen insists he was fooling around, the HBPD are taking the threat seriously, and have also confiscated his electronic devices to trawl for related data. Dark themes have been common in the boy’s social accounts, some of which have shown him posing with the weaponry.

NYPD noticed the boy’s threatening posts (on an undisclosed social media site) and initially believed them to be related to the US Open of Tennis. Once they made the connection to the Huntington Beach event, they notified HBPD, who then acted based on what they saw.

After last year’s event ended with a riot, the US Open made changes like losing the music concerts to put the focus back on surfing and try to defuse any wild behaviour before it went down. Anyone who’s been to this event knows the stench of drunk youths in the midday California sun, as their peeling body slogans (*insert here*) cut through the haze of kicked-up sand. The collective amount of testosterone is ripe for something to go down every year and it’s amazing, and lucky, that things didn’t get worse last year. And even better that at least one potential threat won’t be carried out this year.

Kid playing tough bites off more than he can chew, or serious Virginia Tech-esque meltdown avoided?