Brothers charged in fake kidnapping at Sequim park

[WARNING: GRAPHIC LANGUAGE]

Twin brothers who staged the fake kidnapping of their 4-year-old nephew at Carrie Blake Park in Sequim, Washington, were charged Monday with misdemeanor disorderly conduct.

Previously City Attorney Craig Ritchie said “scaring the hell out of people is not a crime.” But he reconsidered after reading the police report about the April 13 incident that alarmed onlookers at the park.

He told the Peninsula Daily News the charge is justified by the number of people who were frightened and disturbed when men in ski masks grabbed the boy and drove off in a van.

The 25-year-old brothers, Jason and Jeremy Holden, said they were making a video to promote child abduction awareness.

“It wasn’t our intention to harm anybody,” Jason Holden, who made the video with his brother for their YouTube channel TwinzTV, told KIRO Radio’s Dori Monson in April. “It wasn’t really supposed to be based toward the people of Sequim. We were planning on putting this on our YouTube channel to get it out to the world.”

Adults and kids at the park were shocked to see a masked man (Holden) run out of a van, grab a kid from a park bench, carry him back to the van and speed off.

“This is not a joke. This is not funny,” people in the park can be heard shouting in the video after the men returned with the child.

“I’ll be the first to admit the way that we went about it probably wasn’t the best way,” Holden said. “We probably could have thought about it a lot more.”

The incident drew national attention.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.