By Brad Brooks
(Reuters) – Police in Florida said three teenage boys were arrested after they entered U.S. President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort with an AK-47 in a backpack.
Palm Beach Police Spokesman Michael Ogrodnick said the three 15-year-old boys jumped a wall at Mar-a-Lago while fleeing a police officer late last Friday.
The officer had approached the boys as they sat in a car a few miles north of the resort. The boys sped off in the car, trying to escape. They abandoned the car near Mar-a-Lago when they saw another police cruiser and escaped onto the grounds of the resort, Ogrodnick said.
“They didn’t try to get into any buildings, they just jumped over the wall and tried to hide,” he said.
Trump was not at the resort when the incident took place.
The teens, who were not identified, are being held in a juvenile facility while prosecutors decide if they should be charged as adults. The teens have denied they owned the AK-47, saying they had found it.
Trump’s resort has been the scene of several invasions since he became president.
In January, two women were arrested after police opened fire on them for running two security checkpoints nearby, in a car chase not related to Trump.
In February, a Chinese woman was sentenced to six months in jail for resisting arrest during an incident last year when she entered Mar-a-Lago without permission. That took place just months after another Chinese woman was found guilty of lying to federal officers and trespassing onto the resort.
(Reporting by Brad Brooks in Lubbock, Texas, Editing by Rosalba O’Brien)
