The Denver Zoo closed early on Saturday ahead of a planned teen “takeover” of the park that went viral on TikTok as part of an alarming trend among youths that is wreaking havoc in public spaces across the country.
Zoo staff decided to shutter the park to prevent the so-called “takeover” before it could happen.
They weren’t entirely sure what the coup they put a stop to would’ve looked like, but knew they didn’t want to see a repeat of others that have cropped up around the country this summer.
“We don’t know the exact nature of the event, but we know previous events organized in a similar fashion have led to some disruption to local businesses, damage, vandalism, things like that,” zoo spokesperson Jake Kubie told KUSA.
“We don’t believe we’re a target of anything. We haven’t received any information that suggests that there is gonna be any impact to us. We’re always leaning towards caution over everything else.”
Last weekend, one of the planned events took Denver’s Northfield Mall by storm as more than 300 unruly teenagers descended onto the property and started fighting each other following a call-out to meet at the shopping center on TikTok.
Following the early closure, zoo staff were still on high alert, but no one showed.
Still, other community advocates and police spent the rest of their Saturday afternoon patrolling around Denver’s City Park in the sweltering heat just to be extra cautious.
Across the country on the East Coast, Garden State teenagers haven’t been on their best behavior either.
In just one week, two separate TikTok-fueled pop-ups spurred hundreds of teens to shut down a mall and a carnival that were mere miles apart.
In Edison, New Jersey, more than 300 youth turned the Menlo Park Mall into their personal playground, forcing innocent shoppers to take shelter inside stores as fights started breaking out.
The following week, another takeover destroyed a carnival in a mall parking lot just 2.5 short miles away from the Edison site. The carnival had tried to impose an 18-and-up limit for after-hours, but the teenagers weren’t having it and started scaling fences to get inside.
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