A prankster emptied a US cinema after appearing on stage wielding what appeared to be a chainsaw, with terrified patrons telling reporters they thought they were “going to die.”
Three people were injured in the panicked stampede following a man’s entrance to a screening of The Gift at Edwards Big Newport 6 cinema in Newport Beach, Los Angeles, on Saturday at around 11pm.
Witnesses described seeing a man holding “some type of loud, handheld machine” – later established as a leaf blower – over his head and yelling “I’ve got a chainsaw” at the audience.
“No one got up. Then he cranked it again, and everyone started screaming. Someone else yelled they saw a gun,” Kyndall Aldama, 23, told the Orange County Register.
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“You’re literally thinking [about] Texas Chainsaw Massacre, like there’s crazy people out there,” she told CBS Los Angeles.
“You’re in a theatre, and you think you’re going to die,” Ms Aldama, who suffered a hairline fracture, said.
“People started screaming, and everybody got up and started running, like fight-or-flight, and some lady pushed me and I fell on the ground, and like seven or eight people trampled over my leg, and over my head.”
Jennifer Manzella, a spokesperson for Newport Beach police, said that the incident was not being treated as a “minor prank”.
Three men are believed to have been involved in the prank, with two accomplices propping open a backdoor to the cinema in order to allow the third man to enter the theatre.
“The fear that was incited in moviegoers was very much influenced by what’s going on in the rest of the country,” Ms Manzella said, adding that the pranksters intended to fool people into believing they were carrying a weapon.
The prank follows the deaths of two people at a screening of comedy Trainwreck in Louisiana. Nine people were also injured in the attack, with gunman John Houser, 59, killing himself in the theatre.
