Mum in terror at ‘killer clown’ prank
A KERRY mother and her young son were left in a state of distress last week after she was confronted in an underground car park in Tralee by a ‘ killer clown’ as part of a childish prank.
The encounter with the clown, which stood watching Yana Sokolova and her young son Aaron for a few minutes, before slowly making its way towards the pair, took place in the underground car par at Edward Court last Wednesday night.
“I saw someone standing in a white overall costume and wearing a clown mask...my son was very upset, and he had hidden behind the car.”
A TRALEE mother and her young son were left traumatised and in fear for their lives when they were confronted by a terrifying ‘ killer clown’ in an underground car park.
Yana Sokolova and her nineyear old son Aaron had parked at Edward Court in Tralee last Wednesday evening when Aaron spotted a figure, dressed in a white coat and wearing a clown mask, watching them.
“I was taking the shopping out when suddenly I noticed my son was acting very scared. He kept saying ‘mommy, mommy’ and he was pointing at something, so I looked up and saw someone standing in a white overall costume and wearing a clown mask,” Yana told The Kerryman.
Alone with her son and the frightening clown in the underground car park, Yana was in a state of panic.
“I almost had a heart attack when I saw him. The first thing that you think is that this must be a prank, but at the back of the mind, you are also thinking ‘what if this is actually a maniac?’ You just don’t know.”
“I had my young son with me that I felt I needed to protect and I just froze. I couldn’t move and I didn’t know what to do,” she said.
While Yana frantically ran though the options of what was in her car that she could use to defend herself in the case of an attack, she says that her son was in a distressed state.
“My son was very upset, he was crying and he had hidden behind the car. All through this, the clown wasn’t making any noise. He was just looking at us and walking toward us, step by step, without making a sound and not saying anything. I was thinking that I could maybe throw the scooter that I had in my car at him.”
“I started to shout at him, asking ‘what are you doing? what do you want? I was so angry and mad at him. When I was shouting, the man underneath the mask, it turned out to be a 13 or 14 year old boy.”
“He just kept saying, ‘don’t worry, it’s a prank, and then another boy came out from behind another car where he had been trying to film it to put up on YouTube or something. They were very apologetic about it and they kept saying ng ‘sorry’ to me and my son, who ho was still very distressed about the whole situation.”
Yana said she did not get to sleep until 6am the next morning because of the fright she got and she wanted to highlight the dangers involved in doing pranks of this nature.
“What if they had done this prank to someone who had a weak heart? It was a very stupid and dangerous thing that they had done.”
“What if I had decided to throw my scooter at them and it had hit them and hurt them? Who would have been in the wrong? They could have met somebody who could easily have hurt them,” she said.
When contacted, DNG WH Giles, the property management group for the building, declined to comment.