A Maine man strolling down the street with a machete taped where his left arm used to be was only clowning around.
Karmen LePage was relaxing in her Hollis home when her child told her a man with a large weapon in a creepy clown mask was outside.
“I thought it was a joke,” she told the Press Herald. “I thought she’s being funny. I said, ‘Go take a picture of him.'”
Moments later, her daughter returned with an image, and LePage immediately alerted her neighbors. When the 55-year-old mother phoned the cops, she learned they’d already been bombarded with calls regarding the creepy clown, who they spotted walking down Waterboro Road.
Maine State Police Trooper Adam Schmidt told the newspaper the machete-wielding clown fled when officers arrived on the scene. They found Corey Berry in the woods with the large blade duct-taped to the stump of his amputated left arm and highly intoxicated about a half hour later, around 7 p.m.
The 31-year-old suspect told officers he’d intended to prank a family friend and their children, who lived just up the road, according to the newspaper. When officers asked how old the kids were, Berry admitted they were all under the age of seven.
He said he was mimicking previous clown sightings that terrified people up and down the east coast last summer.
Residents in Greenville, S.C., first reported the strange phenomenon in August 2016. Members of the community said a creepy clown was lurking in the woods and attempting to lure children out there with candy.
The clown-sightings quickly spread, with the bizarre bozos making their way north, into New Jersey and New York by fall.
Police charged Berry with criminal threatening. He was booked at York County Jail and has since bonded out.
With News Wire Services
