A man dressed as Pikachu tried to scale the White House fence on Tuesday and was quickly caught by Secret Service agents. Was he hoping to make a courageous political stand for Pokémon rights? Not quite. He told authorities that he just “wanted to become famous” on YouTube.
Curtis Combs, a 36-year-old man from Kentucky, was unarmed but dropped a backpack before jumping a concrete barrier into a restricted area. The backpack was inspected for explosives and was determined to be safe by police.
According to The Washington Post, Combs told police that “the Secret Service closed in too quickly, interrupting his recording of a ‘pre-jump’ ritual,” when he decided to make a break for it anyway. President Trump was at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building at the time of the incident, CNN reports.
Strangely, this wasn’t the first Pikachu-related incident with White House fence jumpers. On September 11th, 2014 a man did the same thing while carrying a Pikachu toy and wearing a Pikachu hat.
Combs told police that he wanted to be arrested, but he didn’t anticipate being apprehended so quickly. He apparently researched how others have scaled the fence to the most famous address in America. YouTube already has plenty of videos of people trying to do precisely that. Typically, the videos are filmed by accomplices to gain attention for a political issue. But other times people are simply mentally disturbed and looking for attention.
Combs entered a plea of not guilty yesterday after being charged with unlawful entry. He has his next court date on November 9th. It’s unclear if they’ll let him wear his Pikachu costume to court.