Boy and girl get nasty shock after kicking in stranger's front door for TikTok challenge
Jeffery Merthie, 15, and Zahmarii Reddick, 13, were arrested in DeBary, near Orlando, on Sunday after they kicked a neighbor's door in.
The challenge is similar to the old-fashioned prank of ding-dong-ditch, but instead of knocking, teens are kicking doors in videos which have gone viral on social media.
Merthie and Reddick were seen on doorbell footage sneaking up to the house, before slowly turning around with their backs to the door and kicking it several times before running off.
Bodycam footage later showed Merthie being placed in cuffs while he stood next to another teen, who was not identified. Both boys told Volusia Sheriff's deputies that they were leaving Reddick's house.
'Where's the girl?' another officer asked.
'We didn't do nothing, I promise you,' the unidentified teen told police.
'I promise you you did,' the officer, who was placing Merthie in cuffs, said. 'Not you, but he did.
The door had large chunks of splintered wood and the lock and doorknob was entirely busted off.
'The camera is crystal clear [of] you running up on their front porch and you turn around and kick their front door in... The camera can not be no more clear.'
Merthie was picked up by police after they noticed his 'distinctive' shorts, which are multicolored.
When asked why they did it, Merthie told them they were 'just being dumb.'
'We weren't responsible, we won't do that no more,' he said.
Merthie tried to defend their actions, saying they just kicked the door, but the officer quickly pulled up photos of the broken door on his phone to show the teen.
The door had large chunks of splintered wood and the lock and doorknob was entirely busted off.
'That's completely broken in,' he said. 'You know those people could have shot you?'
Reddick was taken into custody after her mother allowed officers inside the home to search for the girl.
She was taken out in cuffs while her mother yelled at her: 'Never come back to my house again! Let me tell you something, don't ever play with me again!'
'Let me tell you, mom was furious with her daughter after deputies told her what she had been up to,' Sheriff Mike Chitwood wrote in a statement.
'Parents, use this as a reminder to TALK with your kids that this challenge is not harmless and is the dumbest way to end up with a felony charge or dead.'
The two teens copped felony burglary charges. It is unclear if they will be charged as adults.
Older teens are typically tried for burglary as an adult, according to The Ansara Law Firm.
A juvenile burglary charge carries up to 36 months in prison or probation and fines.
A standard adult burglary charge carries up to five years in prison or probation and fines up to $5,000.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
BBC News
an hour ago
- BBC News
Tesla found partly to blame for fatal Autopilot crash
A jury in Florida has found Tesla partly liable for a 2019 crash in which a Model S sedan using self-driving software killed a pedestrian and severely injured had argued the assistance software, called Autopilot, should have alerted the driver and activated the brakes before the had maintained the driver, George McGee, was at fault and called the verdict "wrong" in a statement to the BBC, while vowing to appeal. The result means the company will have to pay as much as $243m (£189) in punitive and compensatory verdicts marks a setback for Tesla and CEO Elon Musk, who has touted self-driving technology as critical to the company's future. Shares of Tesla dipped following the news and was nearly 2% lower when US markets the verdict, plaintiff's attorneys said Mr Musk had misrepresented the capabilities of the company's Autopilot driver assistance software."Tesla designed Autopilot only for controlled-access highways yet deliberately chose not to restrict drivers from using it elsewhere, alongside Elon Musk telling the world Autopilot drove better than humans," said attorney Brett Schreiber in a statement to the BBC. Mr Schreiber said Tesla and Mr Musk had long propped up the company's valuation with "self-driving hype at the expense of human lives.""Tesla's lies turned our roads into test tracks for their fundamentally flawed technology," he added. The company was sued by the family of Naibel Benavides Leon, 22, who was killed when she was struck by the Model S at a T-intersection in Florida Keys in 2019. Her boyfriend Dillon Angulo suffered life-long injuries and was also involved in the court heard the driver, George McGee, lost sight of the road when he dropped his phone as he was approaching the intersection, causing his car to continue through it and crash into an SUV parked on the other side. The two victims were standing Mr McGee, nor the Autopilot software, hit the brakes in time to prevent the crash. After a three-week trial, the jury awarded $329m in total damages, including $129m in compensatory damages and $200m in punitive damages aimed at deterring Tesla from harmful behaviour in the will be responsible for paying one-third of compensatory damages - $42.5m - and the entirety of the $200m in punitive damages, but according to the company, punitive damages are likely to be capped at a lesser amount."Today's verdict is wrong and only works to set back automotive safety and jeopardize Tesla's and the entire industry's efforts to develop and implement life-saving technology," Tesla said in a said evidence at the trial showed the driver was solely at fault because he was speeding with his foot on the accelerator, which overrode Autopilot, while looking for his phone and not at the road."To be clear, no car in 2019, and none today, would have prevented this crash," Tesla said. "This was never about Autopilot; it was a fiction concocted by plaintiffs' lawyers blaming the car when the driver – from day one – admitted and accepted responsibility."While there have been other federal lawsuits involving Autopilot during fatal crashes, Tesla has settled prior year, it settled a lawsuit over a 2018 crash that killed an Apple engineer after his Model X collided with a highway barrier while operating the company's Autopilot Florida case which culminated on Friday was the first to go to a trial, Mr McGee said his concept of Tesla's Autopilot was that "it would assist me should I have a failure" or "make a mistake," and that he felt the software had failed McGee has settled a separate lawsuit with the plaintiffs for an undisclosed has long faced scrutiny over its Autopilot and self-driving technology, and critics hailed the jury's decision."Tesla is finally being held accountable for its defective designs and grossly negligent engineering practices," said Missy Cummings, a robotics professor at George Mason verdict comes as Tesla is battling weakening sales stemming in part from Mr Musk's political activities. Sign up for our Tech Decoded newsletter to follow the world's top tech stories and trends. Outside the UK? Sign up here.
Daily Mail
3 hours ago
- Daily Mail
Ghislaine Maxwell's bombshell televised testimony on Epstein's crimes indefinitely postponed
Ghislaine Maxwell 's testimony before Congress has been postponed pending her Supreme Court case, a top Republican has announced. Maxwell, the longtime friend of deceased sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, is currently serving a 20-year-sentence for sex trafficking and has been in talks with the Trump administration and Congress about dishing on the disgraced financier and his relationships. House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer announced last week that Maxwell was set to testify before the panel on August 11 at the Tallahassee facility where she is serving her prison sentence. But now he says that planned sit-down interview is no longer happening. Comer said in a letter he would agree to delay their meeting so that Maxwell's pending Supreme Court petition regarding her case could move forward unswayed by her testimony to the oversight panel. 'On July 30, the U.S. Supreme Court noticed that your petition for writ of certiorari will be considered at its conference on September 29. In light of this notice, the Committee is willing to delay your deposition until a date following the Court's certiorari determination,' he wrote. The Supreme Court's new term begins in October. 'Your testimony is vital to the Committee's efforts regarding Mr. Jeffrey Epstein, including the 2007 non-prosecution agreement and the circumstances surrounding Mr. Epstein's death,' the chairman wrote to Maxwell. Just days before, Comer denied the imprisoned woman's request for immunity should she speak to Congress. 'The Oversight Committee will respond to Ms. Maxwell's attorney soon, but it will not consider granting congressional immunity for her testimony,' a spokesperson for the panel told the Daily Mail this week. The letter from Maxwell attorney David Markus to the committee - which was obtained by the Daily Mail - contains a list of conditions for her to testify, including immunity. 'Public reports—including your own statements—indicate that the committee intends to question Ms. Maxwell in prison and without a grant of immunity. Those are non-starters,' the letter states. 'Ms. Maxwell cannot risk further criminal exposure in a politically charged environment without formal immunity. Nor is a prison setting conducive to eliciting truthful and complete testimony. The potential for leaks from such a setting creates real security risks and undermines the integrity of the process.' Markus further requested that the committee provide Maxwell with their questions in advance of their sit-down. He also asked to push their meeting until after Maxwell's pending case before the Supreme Court in which she's alleging wrongful legal treatment and until after a subsequent secondary challenge so that her testimony does not sway those cases. Maxwell may want to talk, according to a source who told the Daily Mail last week 'she would be more than happy to sit before Congress and tell her story.' But there were always going to be strings attached to testimony from such a notorious target. The rush to hear from Epstein's protege comes as some lawmakers have raised concern about her protection. 'I requested that she be placed immediately into protective custody and monitored - by guards as well as working surveillance equipment - around the clock, so that our justice system does not again fail the survivors of this Epstein nightmare,' Republican Rep. Scott Perry posted on X. Trump's closest allies and rank-and-file members - including House Oversight Chairman James Comer, Anna Paulina Luna, Nancy Mace and Marjorie Taylor Greene - backed the subpoena for Maxwell. Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche has met multiple times with Maxwell at the behest of Trump to discuss what she knows about the Epstein files. Blanche offered Maxwell a limited form of immunity during her two days of questioning over former lover and billionaire pedophile Epstein last week. She apparently requested what's known as 'proffer immunity' so that anything she revealed couldn't be used against her at a later date. This form of immunity is specifically provided to people under investigation or facing charges to determine the value of a possible witness. Maxwell has already been tried and convicted. However, Maxwell's lawyer David Oscar Markus said after her questioning: 'There have been no asks and no promises.'
Daily Mail
3 hours ago
- Daily Mail
Virginia Giuffre's own words on Donald Trump, Jeffrey Epstein and her time at Mar-a-Lago
Donald Trump reignited the furor over Jeffrey Epstein this week when he said the late pedophile had 'stolen' Virginia Giuffre from the Mar-a-Lago spa. Such a specific reference to Giuffre, Epstein's best-known sex trafficking accuser, led to a furious response from her family and a renewed maelstrom of conspiracy theories about the case. It also raised a key question - how well did the president know her, if at all? Giuffre died by suicide in April, but she herself did provide the answer to that question nine years ago in a sworn deposition. Her account was given on oath and offered intriguing glimpses into how many times she met Trump, who with, and how he behaved. She made no allegations of wrongdoing against the future commander in chief. The deposition was part of a libel case, launched in 2015, in which Giuffre sued Ghislaine Maxwell for defamation. Maxwell had called Giuffre's public claims about sex trafficking 'lies.' In November 2016 Giuffre was questioned under oath by Maxwell's lawyer, Laura Menninger, and the subject of Trump arose. Giuffre said: 'I worked for Donald Trump and I've met him probably a few times.' She added: 'At Mar-a-Lago. My Dad and him, I wouldn't say they were friends, but my Dad knew him and they would talk all the time - well, not all the time but when they saw each other.' Her father, Sky Roberts, was a maintenance man at Mar-a-Lago and, during the summer of 2000 Virginia, who was 16 at the time, worked as a spa locker room attendant. In her deposition, she said she had never been in the presence of Trump and Epstein together. Her basis for once having said the two men were 'good friends' was because Epstein told her that was the case, she said. According to the deposition, which involved discussion of Epstein's high-profile friends, Giuffre said: 'Donald Trump never flirted with me.' She added it was 'true that he (Trump) didn't partake in any sex with us.' Asked who she meant by 'us' she said other girls. She went on: 'I didn't physically see him have sex with any of the girls, so I can't say who he had sex with in his whole life or not, but I just know it wasn't with me when I was with other girls.' Giuffre also denied a suggestion that she had heard Trump tell Epstein 'You've got the life.' On Tuesday, Trump revealed that, two decades ago, he got upset with Epstein over his poaching of workers, including Giuffre, from the Mar-a-Lago spa. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt later noted the president was responding to a reporter's question, and did not bring up Giuffre himself. "The fact remains that President Trump kicked Jeffrey Epstein out of his club for being a creep to his female employees,' she added. During his back-and-forth with reporters on Air Force One on Tuesday, Trump indicated that 'people were taken out of the spa, hired by him (Epstein), in other words gone.' He was asked: 'Did one of the stolen persons, did that include Virginia Giuffre?' The president responded: 'I don't know. I think she worked at the spa, I think so, I think that was one of the people, he stole her, and by the way she had no complaints about us, as you know, none whatsoever.' There was an angry response from Giuffre's family, who are usually reticent to speak publicly. In a statement they said: 'It was shocking to hear President Trump invoke our sister and say that he was aware that Virginia had been "stolen" from Mar-a-Lago," 'We and the public are asking for answers; survivors demand this.' Epstein took his own life in a New York jail in 2019 while facing federal sex trafficking charges. Trump has denied prior knowledge of Epstein's crimes and said he cut off their relationship around 2004. In an interview with CNN on Thursday, Giuffre's brother Sky Roberts said: 'She wasn't stolen, she was preyed upon at his property, at President Trump's property. 'Stolen seems very impersonal. It feels very much like an object, and the survivors are not objects, women are not objects.' Donald Trump and future wife Melania Knauss with Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell at the Mar-a-Lago club, Palm Beach, Florida, February 12, 2000 Virginia Giuffre previously said she was approached by Maxwell in 2000 and eventually was hired by her as a masseuse for Epstein. But the couple effectively made her a sexual servant, she said, pressuring her into gratifying not only Epstein but his friends and associates. Giuffre said she was flown around the world for appointments with men including Prince Andrew while she was 17 and 18 years old. The men, including Andrew, denied that and questioned Giuffre's credibility. The prince settled with Giuffre in 2022 for an undisclosed sum, agreeing to make a 'substantial donation' to her survivors' organization.
