Clavicular, the online star of a looks-obsessed male subculture, was sentenced on Friday to six months of probation in a case involving the apparent shooting of a dead alligator in the Florida Everglades near Miami.
The social media personality, whose real name is Braden Peters, pleaded no contest to the charge of unlawfully discharging a firearm in public, a misdemeanor. As part of a plea agreement, he avoided jail time but must complete 20 hours of community service and take a firearms safety course. If Mr. Peters successfully adheres to the terms of the deal, the charge will be removed from his record.
Mr. Peters, 20, is known for livestreaming in public, but the community service must not be streamed, the court records state.
Jeffrey Neiman, a lawyer for Mr. Peters, said in a statement that his client had “accepted responsibility for his conduct and reached a resolution that appropriately reflects the circumstances of this incident.” He added, “No individual was injured, and the alligator involved was already deceased prior to the events at issue.”
Mr. Peters rose to internet stardom as the leader of the “looksmaxxing” subculture, an online community of young men seeking to optimize their physical appearance, sometimes through extreme and dangerous lengths like surgery and unproven supplements. Thousands of people regularly watch Mr. Peters’s livestreams.
In March, the same platform that gave him fame got him into trouble after a video circulated online showing Mr. Peters and a group of other young men in an airboat in the Florida Everglades, firing gunshots at an alligator that appeared to be dead.
“Let’s just test really how dead it is,” Mr. Peters says in the video before he and another man collectively fire more than a dozen shots. “It’s definitely dead,” Mr. Peters decides before putting away his gun.
The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission said at the time that it was looking into the episode. About a month later, the authorities charged Mr. Peters and two other online personalities who they said had also illegally discharged weapons that day.
Andrew Morales, 22, known online as the Cuban Tarzan, also appeared in Miami-Dade County Court on Friday and pleaded no contest. He reached the same deal as Mr. Peters and was also ordered to six months of probation, a gun safety course and community service.
The third individual charged, Yabdiel Annibal Cotto Torres, 26, the online persona Baby Alien, was not in court on Friday.
Mr. Peters has had previous run-ins with the law, often because he livestreams his antics. This year, he was arrested in Scottsdale, Ariz., and charged with possession of a forged instrument and possession/use of a dangerous drug. The Maricopa County Attorney’s Office declined to prosecute him.
And on the same day as the alligator shooting, Mr. Peters was briefly booked into the Broward County Jail on misdemeanor battery charges after deputies accused him of instigating a fight between two women at an Airbnb and streaming it online.
Soon after that, he was hospitalized in Miami after apparently overdosing at a bar. The incident was captured in a livestream.
Pooja Salhotra covers breaking news across the United States.
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