3 Teens Fleeing Police Jump Wall At Trump’s Mar-A-Lago Resort With Loaded AK-47, Arrested

Three teenagers fleeing police have scaled a wall at President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida with an AK-47 in a backpack, authorities said Wednesday, Aug. 5.

Palm Beach Police spokesman Michael Ogrodnick said the 15-year-old boys, after entering the property, dumped a backpack which contained the semiautomatic rifle with a loaded 14-round magazine. The incident happened on July 31. They were soon arrested.

The teens apparently didn’t know whose property they trespassed onto, Ogrodnick told Miami Herald. He said neither the president nor any of his family members were present on the property at that time, which saved the teens from being shot by the Secret Service agents. The club was closed for the summer.

Police spotted the teens sitting in a parked car around midnight, and the driver took off when officers approached the vehicle.

As they approached the club, the teens spotted a second officer who was conducting an unrelated traffic stop. The teens abruptly pulled over near the site, probably thinking it was a roadblock set up to catch them, Ogrodnick said.

The boys then jumped a nearby wall and tried to hide as officers surrounded the club and a helicopter and a police dog were used to help find them. Ogrodnick said they never attempted to get into any of the resort’s buildings.

Another police spokesperson told WPTV that Mar-a-Lago security found the backpack containing the AK-47 on a seawall on the property. The teens claimed they didn’t own the rifle but had “found it.”

The trio was arrested on charges of armed trespassing, armed burglary and resisting arrest without violence. They were being held at a juvenile detention facility and prosecutors are deciding whether to charge them as adults.

There have been as many as five instances of trespassing at Mar-a-Lago ever since Trump became president in 2017. The most recent one involved a Connecticut singer who smashed her car through a checkpoint outside the resort while fleeing police in a rented SUV on Jan. 31.