MIAMI (WSVN) – Police have determined there was no threat after a man posted a photo to Instagram showing him holding a high-powered rifle and naming the Ultra Music Festival in the caption.
7News sources said City of Miami Police tracked down the man on Sunday and immediately questioned him.
The photo that surfaced on Instagram showed the subject wearing a dark gray T-shirt, jean shorts and a baseball cap while holding the firearm. On the table next to him was a handgun with a silencer clearly visible.
The picture was captioned “Ready for the weekend” and included the hashtags “#tgif,” “#ultramusicfestival” and “#mmw2018,” the latter being a reference to Miami Music Week.
The name on the account was Rayne Russell, and the photo was tagged in Fort Lauderdale.
Ray Martinez, the head of security for Ultra said his social media command team were already on to Russell’s post.
“We were monitoring all the social media sites, and we saw a post that this individual had posted,” Martinez said.
According to police, Russell came to Miami from Jamaica for the festival and took the photo with a family member’s legally-owned guns.
After questioning Russell, they determined that there was no credible threat. However, revelers at the festival feel that this was no laughing matter.
“It’s like madness, you know?” said reveler Kamelia Kargar. “It’s scary, and it’s freaking me out.”
“I’m very worried because, when there’s a big crowd, you don’t know what kind of person might do something crazy,” said Ultra goer Abdiel Garcia.
Reveler Eric Mack said the photo doesn’t necessarily mean Russell was targeting the festival. “I don’t know what his intentions were, but I hope that they weren’t bad,” he said.
“Deja vu, my friend, just like it happened in Las Vegas,” said Garcia.
After the October 2017 massacre at an outdoor music festival in Las Vegas, security is even tighter at this year’s Ultra. Officials said they are taking any and every form of threat seriously.
“Really? Right after the Vegas incident happened?” Martinez said. “We met together with the Miami Police Department and started our planning right from that moment and looked at the lessons learned — what you can learn from those incidences.”
Russell was taken into custody just hours after he attended the festival on Sunday.
“I’m very confident that between Miami Police Department and FBI they were able to determine that it was not a credible threat,” Martinez said.
(Copyright (c) 2024 Sunbeam Television. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.)