Fayetteville, Arkansas police confirmed to Motherboard that they are investigating a shooting at the home of popular YouTuber Boogie2988. Boogie, who makes videos about video games, tech, and weight loss, says he fired a “warning shot” at another video creator Frank Hassle who showed up at his home uninvited, and who threatened him.
A spokesperson for Fayetteville police would not give Motherboard more information, citing that there is an “active investigation” at an address that matches photos of the incident posted to social media by both Boogie and Hassle. The spokesperson said that officers “did respond to a shooting” at the address at 3:22 p.m. local time.
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Hassle was banned from YouTube earlier this summer, and now posts videos mainly on the right-wing BitChute site. Many of his videos show him explicitly harassing people in public, and he has been publicly and aggressively posting harassing tweets about Boogie for weeks.
After the incident, both Boogie and Hassle posted videos and tweets confirming their involvement. The aftermath of the situation played out over Twitter on Monday afternoon, and at first appeared to be weird YouTube beef gone wrong, or perhaps some sort of publicity stunt. Monday night, Boogie tweeted that the incident was “serious,” “scary,” and “one of the hardest days of my life.”
Hassle posted some DMs on Twitter that appear to show that Boogie was perhaps at one time playing along with Hassle, but in recent days Boogie had begun publicly telling Hassle not to come to his home. The existence of an active police investigation and a video posted by Boogie of the moments before and after the shooting suggest that this is more nefarious than YouTube “drama” gone wrong.
“I am currently trending on Twitter because I had a stalker come to my home today,” Boogie said in a video about the incident. “Long story short, this guy decided it was his decision to start stalking me and harassing me, threatening me mentally, physically, threatening to come to my home, threatening to harm me when he did.”
Boogie says that Hassle drove to Fayetteville over the weekend and began taking photos near his house “to prove that he was here.”
“I made it abundantly clear to him and anyone else that would listen that he was not welcome in my home and because of his previous threats I would pull a gun on him. And today, he decided to show up, and so I did exactly that,” he added. “I pulled a gun on him, I told him to leave my property, I told him I felt threatened. I fired a warning shot so that he would leave. After firing a warning shot, he did.”
Boogie also posted a SimpliSafe surveillance camera video of Hassle showing up at his home: “Come on you fuckin’ pussy, what’s the deal,” Frank yells in the video. “Where’s the gun at, you fat faggot. Open fire! Open fire!”
Keemstar, a YouTuber who follows what he calls “drama” on YouTube, originally broke news of the shooting by tweeting a series of videos and photos about the shooting: “@Boogie2988 just shot a Gun at a white male that went into his home. #DramaAlert Boogie thinks it was @FrankHassleYT.” Hassle posted a series of tweets of GoPro footage and photos of himself in front of Boogie’s house: “I took the gun and made him suck it like a dick while the whole neighborhood watched,” he tweeted. And “My house my rules.”
Boogie said he was unable to post more footage on YouTube because of its terms of service, but that he handed over the rest of the footage to the police. “This type of harassment is very real,” he said. “This is a very deranged person showing up at my house today with the intention of escalating things.”
Boogie, Keemstar, and Hassle did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
