MIAMI – Miami police officers guffawed at the conspiracy theorists who were sharing a video on social media to spread rumors that there was an alien on Monday night at Bayside Marketplace, in downtown Miami.
On Friday, USA Today published a story about the viral video. Officer Michael Vega, a spokesperson for the Miami Police Department, was forced to explain: “There were no aliens, UFOs, or ETs.”
The image on the video going viral, Vega wrote, is “a shadow of a person walking. If you look at the beginning of the clip, you can see the person at the bottom of the shadow.”
Dozens — some who had fireworks and sticks — were fighting at the mall at 401 Biscayne Boulevard, according to police officers, who reported that there was “a large crowd of unruly juveniles.”
“We have temporarily closed some lanes on Biscayne Boulevard between 2 and 4 Streets. Please avoid this area,” Vega wrote on X during the police response.
The sound of the fireworks prompted people to run and to report that there was an active shooter at the mall, but there wasn’t, police said. Miami Fire Rescue didn’t report injuries.
“If there was an alien, every officer out there would have had their guns out and hiding,” Vega wrote.
The Miami International Airport was not closed. There were no power outages. After the chaos, police officers reported arresting four teenagers Monday in downtown.
Days later, Forbes, Newsweek, TMZ, Rolling Stone, and The Sun, a British tabloid newspaper, were among the publications that reported stories about the rumors.
Related report