A University City man dressed as the Batman villain the Joker and livestreamed himself this week as he threatened to bomb and kill people along the Delmar Loop, prosecutors said.
Jeremy J. Garnier, 48, was charged Tuesday with making a terrorist threat, a felony.
According to charges, Garnier was dressed as the Joker, complete with makeup, at the Blueberry Hill bar/restaurant on Monday evening where he was reported to have made threats. Someone reported to police that Garnier was making threats using his Facebook Live app.
Police responded to the scene in response to a call for an active shooter, charges said.
A nearly hourlong livestream posted to the Facebook account for a Jeremy Joseph Garnier shows a man dressed as the Joker talking to the camera in a bedroom where he is putting on a costume. He’s later seen driving in his car, smoking a pipe and going to the St. Louis Galleria, where he’s stopped by security and asked to leave. The video then shows him driving to the Delmar Loop, at times talking about ending the country’s opioid epidemic.
“Yes I’m doing this for attention, but the attention I seek is to take over the world,” he says early in the video. “I’m going to start killing people until this reaches a thousand (viewers), and once it reaches a thousand, I’m going to go out in public and I’m going to kill more. We’re not going to go to any movie theaters. We’re going to go totally unarmed because we don’t want to alert the authorities into thinking we might be on an actual rampage.”
He is seen later in the video entering Blueberry Hill. A host asks to see identification and when he says he doesn’t have it, he tells another worker he’s 48 years old. They allow him in. He is then seen walking through Blueberry Hill, looking out the front windows and noticing a police car.
“I think they’re looking for me, but it’s OK,” the man said.
He’s later seen telling someone, presumably a bartender, that he wants a Sprite and doesn’t drink alcohol.
“Yeah, I can’t be inebriated when I’m planning on, you know, killing a bunch of people,” he said. “It’s not something you can do. I’m live on Facebook right now. I’ve got like nearly 2,000 people watching me.”
He is then seen telling someone he’s not armed and identifying himself to viewers as Jeremy Joseph Garnier.
“I’m not armed and I weigh 150 pounds,” he said. “I don’t have no weapons on me. I’m not going to do nothing. You’ve got me messed up. Except all these bombs.”
Within a couple of minutes, the man can be seen being handcuffed in Blueberry Hill by a police officer, with the livestream still rolling.
A judge ordered Garnier held without bail. Court records did not list an attorney for him.
He has a criminal history that includes multiple convictions for burglary in St. Louis County. He also has a 2000 conviction in East St. Louis federal court for robbing a credit union. He was sentenced to seven years in federal prison in that case, and was later indicted for walking away from a halfway house.
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