Videos shared on social media showed what appeared to be a massive amount of police responding to the scene of a large confrontation after they were dispatched to deal with a large group of unruly teenagers in Miami.
On Monday, police say a group of about 50 teens caused what was described in reports as a riot at Miami's Bayside Marketplace, which is an outdoor shopping center situated just about 5 miles from South Beach.
Reports and video shared online confirmed that about 60 Miami police cruisers descended on the area in a swarm of cars flashing lights and blaring sirens. Local reports said four teenagers were arrested in the melee.
Miami police called it a "large crowd of unruly juveniles" that caused authorities to have to temporarily close parts of the busy Biscayne Boulevard, telling people in the area to avoid trying to pass through.
That was when things took an unexpected turn on social media as multiple accounts, with some posts garnering millions of views, claimed police weren't being truthful about what actually happened.
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Social media posts claimed eyewitnesses reported seeing creatures in the crowd blending in. One user on X said some claimed to have witnessed a gray-silver colored "very tall" creature among the chaos.
Rebuttals to the out-of-this-world claims said users couldn't possibly have clearly witnessed any extraterrestrial creatures at the oceanside mall because the videos were not high quality and the sun had set.
Many of the videos were taken from a distance above the crowd, appearing to have been filmed from apartment windows.
What was confirmed by authorities was that some of the teens at the scene were setting off fireworks which had been mistaken at one point for gunfire. The alien rumors took on a life of their own as a sort of parallel story to the actual story, with memes appearing to poke fun at how fast rumors can start online.
"5th day into the New Year now people spotting Aliens in the Miami Mall 2024 is in for one hell of a ride," one user commented on social media.
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