Several people were arrested Monday after hundreds flocked to Seaside Heights to see YouTube stars the Nelk Boys, who hosted a house party that violated the state’s coronavirus guidelines.
The Nelk Boys are Canadian-born Jesse Sebastiani, Kyle Forgeard and Steve Deleonardis. On Sept. 14, they rented the infamous “Jersey Shore” house (from the widely popular MTV reality series) to celebrate the launch of a new website selling merchandise for their Full Send brand, The Hill reports.
According to police, a small crowd initially gathered at the Broadwalk residence, but as it swelled throughout the day to at least 1,500 largely maskless people, police were forced to shut down the event.
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“We will not tolerate this or these kinds of things that will disrupt an image we’re trying to correct,” Seaside Mayor Anthony Vaz told NBC on Tuesday. “It was shocking to me.”
He added, “When you have numbers of people like that in a community, that scares people. And we’re not going to tolerate it.”
The Nelk Boys posted videos on Instagram documenting the party, including the moment when police arrived. They were not among those arrested and charged during the party.
The trio, who have 5.7 million YouTube subscribers, gained Internet fame for their controversial pranks. Their followers also can’t get enough of the clips showing the massive, mask-free parties that the boys have been hosting at colleges across the country.
Their YouTube channel has been suspended for creating a “public health risk” with these college campus/house parties.
“We suspended the NELK channel from the Partner Program because they encouraged large numbers of people to disregard social distancing guidelines, creating a large public health risk,” the YouTube team said in a tweet.
The Nelk Boys previously protested coronavirus restrictions in Los Angeles by leading a crowd in a chant calling for gyms to reopen.
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