Police have arrested a man accused of trying to throw a sex toy onto the court at a New York Liberty game at Brooklyn’s Barclays Center who instead hit a 12-year-old girl in the crowd who was enjoying the game, officials said Thursday.
Charles Burgess, 32, who was wearing a “Beavis and Butt-head” T-shirt at the time of his “flagrant foul,” surrendered to police Wednesday, admitting that he was the one who threw the green sex toy during the Big Apple WNBA team’s “Women’s Empowerment” night on Aug. 5.
Brooklyn prosecutors charged him with misdemeanor assault, as well as menacing, reckless endangerment, possession of obscene material, interference with a professional sporting event, weapons possession and other charges, officials said.
Burgess was released without bail during his arraignment in Brooklyn Criminal Court on Thursday evening.
Burgess, who is from Dayton, Ohio, was watching the Liberty lady hoopers defeat the Dallas Wings 85-76 when he flung the sex toy from his seat — a bizarre practice that has been going viral online.
The inappropriate item missed the court, instead pelting the child in the leg, cops said.
The girl suffered a minor injury, but refused medical attention.
Burgess left the Barclays Center a few moments later, but cops caught surveillance video of him walking through the place. The NYPD released the images, asking anyone with information about his whereabouts to come forward.
Detectives managed to identify Burgess after recovering video of him scanning a ticket while entering the downtown Brooklyn arena. The center’s computers registered Burgess’ ticket being scanned at the exact same time, officials said.
Cops confirmed Burgess’ identity by matching his Ohio DMV photo to the surveillance footage of their suspect.
An email to Burgess’ attorney, Paul D’Emilia, was not immediately returned.
The disturbing trend of throwing sex toys onto the court is becoming more and more common during WNBA games as these disruptions go viral online, officials said.
Since early August, sex toys have been thrown on court during games in Atlanta on July 29, Chicago on Aug. 1, Los Angeles on Aug. 5 and Chicago again on Aug. 7, when the offending object hit the court in the game’s closing seconds, marring the Atlanta Dream’s victory over the home-team Sky, WNBA officials said.
One of the intimate devices nearly hit Los Angeles Sparks guard Sophie Cunningham during the team’s game against the Indiana Fever.
Security guards at the basketball arenas aren’t picking up the sex toys, which are usually plastic, as fans enter the stadium, Ty Richmond, the president of the event services division at Allied Universal Security, a company that provides security services to many NBA and WNBA games, told the Associated Press.
“Not all stadiums are using a screening process that’s consistent and can detect [the sex toys] because of what it would require — pat-down searches, opening the bags, prohibiting bags,” he said. “[It’s] the conflict of expediency, of getting fans into the arena and into the venue, which is an important issue, and security and safety.”
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