Miami Mall 'Creature' Video Goes Viral

An incident at a Miami shopping mall which resulted in the arrest of four teenagers earlier this week has sparked the spread of a bizarre theory on social media which suggests the alleged presence of aliens at the Florida establishment.

More than 60 police cars swarmed the Bayside Marketplace in downtown Miami on Monday night to shut down a fight involving a group of teenagers who were also throwing fireworks at each other in the open-air shopping mall.

Four teenagers were arrested in connection to the incident, as reported by local WPLG-TV. According to the suspects' arrest reports mentioned by the television station, the juveniles were "causing a riot inside the mall" and "causing panic."

Dozens of officers were called around 8:30 p.m. local time to the two-story mall at 401 Biscayne Blvd. after several people called 911 to report what they thought were gunshots, but were instead loud fireworks. Police cars occupied the boulevard, temporarily blocked access between Second and Fourth streets.

The sheer amount of police deployment to address the incident has raised suspicions among many on social media that the case might have involved more than just teenagers.

Some who analyzed footage of the scene outside the Miami mall on Monday have developed the theory that an alien "creature" was the real cause of the disturbance.

One account on X, formerly known as Twitter, which promotes "red pill" cinema (with the red pill, a concept taken from the Matrix, having come to represent, especially within alt-right communities, the willingness to learn a potentially unsettling truth), claimed the footage showed "10ft Aliens/Creatures (caught on camera?)" which "fired at inside and outside Miami Mall."

The post reached over 99,500 views on the social media platform, showing the impact of the theory.

Another post on X that claimed authorities weren't telling people "the truth about why Miami had possibly the biggest police response I've ever seen in my life" received 7.7 million views as of early on Friday.

"I zoomed in on one of the tiktok videos about the Miami mall creature, so you can see the gray creature walking in between these police cars and the building," wrote another user on the platform, sharing a video of the Monday incident.

The same user claimed that eyewitnesses said the creature was blending in with the crowd "even though it was very tall" and that it's gray-silver in color. The Miami Police report of the incident does not mention the presence of any unidentified creature corresponding to the claims made online.

The theory hasn't met universal backing on social media, where some have pointed out that they couldn't see any alleged alien creature and others said that what on the low-quality footage looked like a suspicious creature was possibly "three officers walking side by side."

Newsweek contacted Miami Police Department for comment by email on Friday.

Miami police said that two of the male teenagers arrested, aged 15, are facing charges of burglary, third-degree grand theft, battery and resisting an officer without violence. The two other arrested teens, aged 14 and 16, were charged with resisting an officer without violence.

The teens' arrest reports said police was escorting 50 juveniles out of the Miami mall when they spotted another 15 juveniles beating up a driver and ordered them to stop. The teens ran away and were eventually stopped by police at a parking garage.

Update 1/5/24, 9:22 a.m. ET: This article has been updated with additional information.