The Slatest

The Most Terrifying Headline You’ll Read Today Involves Clown Makeup

The Kenosha News brings us what I can only hope will the most terrifying headline I’ll read all day/week/month/ever:

Based on the police report, it appears as though the headline writers in Wisconsin could have tweaked that to “Police: Drunk man in clown makeup dangled child from railroad overpass”—although I can’t decide if that would make it more terrifying or less. According to the paper, a woman called police after she “saw a man in clown makeup dragging screaming children into the woods … about 2. am. Sunday.” When the cops showed up, they found 33-year-old Antonio J. Brown wearing clown makeup and hiding behind some tall bushes with two children, aged 8 and 13.

The children—understandably—were holding each other and crying uncontrollably, according to court records. They later told police that Brown, who is (or at least was) their mother’s boyfriend, had come back late from a Halloween party and invited them to go for a walk with him on some nearby train tracks. That’s when things got really dicey. Brown allegedly forced the two children to drink and when they later tried to run away, Brown got mad. After he caught them, he grabbed the 13-year-old and dangled him upside down over an overpass, telling him that, “If you try that again, I’m going to drop you.”

Brown is charged with two counts of physical abuse of a child and two counts of second-degree recklessly endangering safety. If convicted, he faces up to 16 years in prison. Much more over at the Kenosha News.