Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Teen arrested in fake alligator prank
Stripping to your bare chest, hurdling the wooden fence at an open-air mall and putting the famous RKO wrestling move on a fake alligator inside a tranquil streaming water and greenery display.
And then the footage is posted on social media.
The cops call it a bad move by a teen: It’s the second time in two weeks that Gianny Sosa-Hernandez was linked to a wrestling prank that resulted in his arrest.
Miami-Dade police confirmed the fake alligator wrestling video was shot March 30 at The Falls shopping center in the suburban Kendall neighborhood. Given the video’s clarity and wide distribution online, police seemingly had little trouble finding someone to identify Sosa-Hernandez, 18, as the person in the video. The police said Monday they considered it an act of vandalism at a local mall.
During the stunt, the person recording the video can be heard laughing and yelling “RKO, RKO” and giving a 1, 2, 3, count as the wrestling teen seemingly pins the display gator — belly up.
The RKO is the signature finishing move of World Wrestling Entertainment wrestler Randy Orton. It typically involves approaching an opponent, jumping high into the air, grabbing the back of the opponent’s head, and then driving the opponent’s face into the mat when they fall.
The young man police identify as Sosa-Hernandez didn’t go that far, but he did damage the fake gator to the tune of nearly $3,700, according to the manager of The Falls. He’s charged with criminal mischief.
Last week, Sosa-Hernandez was arrested for allegedly trying to put the same wrestling move on the principal of the school he attends — Southridge Senior High School in Cutler Bay. He was charged with battery on an official employee and interference with an educational institution.
He later told WSVN-Ch. 7 that he was playing around and “wasn’t trying to hurt anybody.”
A sibling told the station that — in insisting on the arrest — the school’s principal was trying to ruin his brother’s life.
In the mall fake alligator case, Sosa-Hernandez was booked into Miami-Dade’s jail on a charge of criminal mischief and was being held on a bond of $5,000.
He “provided a full confession to the incident and apologized for the act,” according to a Miami-Dade police arrest report.
During a court hearing Tuesday morning, MiamiDade Judge Renatha Francis seemed exasperated that Sosa-Hernandez was in front of her for a second time in two weeks.
“You’ve got to find something else to do,” she said in comments broadcast on WPLG-Ch. 10.
“You’re just going to keep coming back here and keep being a media sensation fro all the wrong reasons,” she said.