A New York City teenager and self-described “incel” has been arrested for telling diners at a Manhattan restaurant that he was about to blow them up—and broadcasting the threat on a YouTube livestream, prosecutors said.
Malik Sanchez, a 19-year-old who goes by the online name “Smooth Sanchez,” was charged Wednesday with conveying false and misleading information and hoaxes. The teen allegedly livestreamed himself pretending to detonate a bomb near the Flatiron restaurant’s outdoor seating area while shouting, “I take you with me and I kill you all!” and “Allahu Akbar!”
The charges come just five months after Sanchez was arrested for livestreaming his climb up the Queensboro Bridge on YouTube—and pepper-spraying a Manhattan woman days earlier.
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A self-described “involuntary celibate,” Sanchez has frequently posted about his hate for women and belief that COVID-19 is fake. In his last video on April 2, the teenager blasted out a highlight reel of his “best” moments from 2020 in which he bounces around Manhattan insulting women—including calling two “fat”—and harassing employees at a Crate and Barrel.
In another video from last November, Sanchez coughs on two women who ask him to wear a mask before yelling, “COVID IS FAKE.” Later in the video, he hurls a derogatory slur at another man, and says a fan paid him $2 to “smack a bitch.”
Prosecutors noted in a criminal complaint that Sanchez has posted several videos about his affiliation with the “incel community,” a misogynist group of men who complain about women rejecting them. In one February 2021 video captioned “INCEL ARMY RISE UP,” Sanchez harasses two women on the street before yelling, “You think I could get that number? Fuck you two. Go make a TikTok and chase Chad.” (The term “Chad” in the “incel movement” refers to a white male who successfully sleeps with women.)
“Fuck you on behalf of the Incels. Fuck you. I’m a virgin for life,” Sanchez says, before calling Elliot Rodger, an incel who murdered six people in 2014 and injured over a dozen more, a “good guy.”
Days later, Sanchez posted a video in which he approached an enclosed outdoor eating area in front of a Flatiron restaurant, and then boasted to his followers that he was going to “enhance their meal.” Walking up to two women seated at a table, Sanchez began to loudly shout “bomb detonation in two, in two minutes.”
“I take you with me and I kill all you. I kill all you right now. And I kill all you for Allah. Fuck, fuck that shit. I’m gonna Allah. I’m gonna do it. I’m gonna fucking do it for Allah. I’m gonna do it, for, Allah, Allah, Allahu Akbar, Come on. I do it, bomb now, bomb now,” Sanchez says in the Feb. 13 video, according to the complaint.
Startled, the two women quickly gather their belongings and run into the restaurant. Four other people also run away from the enclosed outdoor area before Sanchez walks away and tells his fans: “Yo, all of them scattered.”
“Holy shit. Holy shit boys. That was fucking five stars. That was five stars. Holy shit, huh?” Sanchez said, according to the complaint.
A few weeks later, on March 20, Sanchez posted another video that showed him approaching women eating outside in Manhattan. In the video, Sanchez proclaims his support for “incels” and Rodger while making hand gestures “mimicking pointing a gun,” the complaint states.
“After multiple individuals attempted to get Sanchez to stop, Sanchez sprayed pepper spray in the face of one of those individuals. Sanchez was arrested by responding NYPD officers and charged with state offenses and was thereafter released on bail,” the court docs read.
This is not the first time Sanchez has had a run-in with the NYPD. Last October, he gained local notoriety after he scaled the Queensboro bridge and livestreamed the event.
“Nobody’s gonna top me after this! It’s over. I won! I win! I won! Sanchez has won IRL!” Sanchez yells in the video. Eventually, NYPD Emergency Services pulled Sanchez to the ground with a harness.
Once in custody, authorities said they were able to link the teenager to a pepper-spray incident against a 40-year-old woman in Chelsea. The woman told police she saw Sanchez recording her and got sprayed when she confronted him.
