Police: Teen in car crash near Mar-a-Lago suicidal

Boy says he was trying to kill self after FBI chat following CNN prank.

PALM BEACH — A teenager who ran his car into a fence four blocks north of Mar-a-Lago just before President Donald Trump arrived Friday evening was attempting suicide and previously had called in terrorist threats to CNN, according to Palm Beach police.

The boy, whose name was redacted from a police report because of his age, was reported as a missing suicidal teen, armed and dangerous with a baseball bat and a metal pipe. According to the report, officers found the bat and pipe in the white Dodge Charger belonging to his mother after the teen crashed it into a construction fence shortly before 6:50 p.m.

Trump’s motorcade arrived at Mar-a-Lago about 7:10 p.m. The report didn’t mention Trump’s arrival, or whether the Secret Service considered the teen to be a credible threat to the president.

The boy was apprehended by a Palm Beach County sheriff ’s deputy after he backed into a fence on Via Palma, which is within the Secret Service-mandated restricted zone around Mar-a-Lago, the report said. He told officers he ran into the fence while turning around to try to drive into the Intracoastal Waterway and kill himself, according to the report.

The report said the teen drove past two security checkpoints “at a high rate of speed” in the 800 block of South County Road, just north of its intersection with South Ocean Boulevard. That area is restricted to ID-carrying residents only.