Police in Texas say they are charging a teen with a terroristic threat, after they say she claimed that she is “willfully spreading” the novel coronavirus, which causes the respiratory disease COVID-19.
“We have identified the woman seen on social media claiming to be COVID-19 positive and willfully spreading it as 18-year-old Lorraine Maradiaga of Carrollton,” the Carrollton Police Department in Texas wrote in a post on their Facebook. “We are charging her with Terroristic Threat.”
The police department referred to multiple videos posted to the social media platform, Snapchat. In the video, Maradiaga can be seen at a drive-thru COVID-19 testing site, where a nurse tells her to go home and wait for her results.
Shortly after, in the following video, Maradiaga is at what she claims to be a Walmart, where she talks about purposely spreading the virus to other shoppers.
“I’m here at Walmart about to infest every (expletive), because if I’m going down, all you (expletive) are going down,” she said in the Snapchat video, according to NBCDFW news in Texas.
“If you want to get the coronavirus and (expletive) die, call me,” Maradiaga said. “I’ll meet you up and (cough, cough) and I will shorten your life.”
“My parents told me to stay my a** at home. Who the f**k are you to tell me to stay my a** home?” she said in the video, according to The Sun.
In the police department’s statement on Facebook, they note that they have no confirmation that Maradiaga has tested positive for COVID-19 but that they are taking “her social media actions very seriously.”
According to NBCDFW news, officers from the Carrollton Police Department arrived at Maradiaga’s house on Sunday, but she was not present. The police have said that they are cooperating with Maradiaga’s family and that they hoped she turns herself in.
The video comes at a time when the novel coronavirus has run rampant throughout the U.S., becoming the virus’s epicenter. According to a tracker provided by Johns Hopkins University, there are more than 337,000 cases in the U.S. and at least 9,654 deaths.
In Texas, there are more than 7,200 confirmed COVID-19 cases and at least 140 deaths.
The rising number of coronavirus across the U.S., has forced a number of states, including Texas, to implement stay-at-home policies, ordering citizens to stay inside unless leaving for an essential service like grocery shopping.
Across the world, the virus has infected more than 1.2 million people and has caused over 70,000 deaths. More than 270,000 people have recovered from the virus.
