By Noah Goldberg
New York Daily News
NEW YORK — A Manhattan YouTuber pleaded guilty Friday to a terrifying livestreamed bomb threat at a crowded restaurant, prosecutors announced.
Malik Sanchez, a 19-year-old self-proclaimed “involuntary celibate” and well-known streamer, was arrested by the feds in April after threatening to blow up a Flatiron restaurant in a stunt intended to entertain his followers on YouTube.
“Bomb detonation in two, in two minutes. I take you with me and I kill all you,” he yelled during a livestream on Feb. 13.
Two women in the video began packing up their belongings and rushed away from Sanchez, who was known online as “Smooth Sanchez.”
“Yo, all of them scattered,” he said. “Holy s—t boys. That was f—king five stars. That was five stars.”
Cops responded to the bomb scare, but Sanchez was gone by the time they arrived.
His arrest highlighted a toxic subculture of streamers who get into trouble for mean-spirited, racist and sexist pranks.
Sanchez made other disturbing videos, including one on Feb. 6, 2021, where he yelled at two women walking down the street in Manhattan that he had “Incel rage,” according to prosecutors.
He had also proclaimed in the video that he was a supporter of Elliot Rodger, who murdered six people — including two women at a sorority house — in California in 2014. Rodger is credited with starting the incel movement.
Sanchez said that Rodger’s victims “deserved to be run over and hit by a truck. They deserved to be slaughtered.”
Sanchez had also been previously arrested for scaling the Queensboro Bridge and pepper-spraying people during livestreamed stunts.
On Friday Sanchez pleaded guilty to conveying false and misleading information and hoaxes.
After spending nearly a month in jail after his arrest, Sanchez was released from Essex County jail in New Jersey in order to seek psychiatric help.
“Anybody who thinks what I saw in the video was funny is definitely in need of mental health care, definitely,” Manhattan Federal Court Judge Colleen McMahon said on May 6.
“I’ve seen the crime. I’ve seen it, because he videotaped it, and he broadcast it on YouTube and it’s disgusting. It’s absolutely disgusting. It’s juvenile, it’s puerile, it’s deeply troubling, but it’s bailable,” she added.
Sanchez is set to be sentenced on Feb. 8. He faces up to five years in prison.
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