A man dressed as the Pokémon character Pikachu attempted to infiltrate the White House Tuesday morning before he was caught by Secret Service officers manning the perimeter, authorities said.
Curtis Combs, 36, of Somerset, Kentucky, jumped a concrete barrier on the outer perimeter of the south grounds of the White House complex and was quickly arrested, according to a police report released Wednesday night.
President Donald Trump was nearby in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building doing radio interviews at the time of the breach.
According to the police report, Combs told officers he was unarmed before climbing the fence and ignoring signs that marked the area as restricted. He ignored multiple commands to stop climbing.
Before scaling the fence, Combs dropped a backpack which was investigated by bomb technicians before eventually getting cleared by police. Combs was not known to law enforcement, court documents say.
Combs told Secret Service agents he wanted to be famous and hoped to accomplish that by jumping the White House fence in a Pikachu outfit and posting it to YouTube. He told investigators he could not complete a video recording because of the officers’ “quick response” according to court documents.
He also told police he knew he would be arrested and researched DC charges and previous jumpers. Combs, who pleaded not guilty Wednesday to a charge of unlawful entry, has a court date set for November 9. A message left with his attorney, Edward Gain, was not immediately returned.
Pikachu, a yellow, chubby rodent, is one of the most prominent characters in the Pokémon franchise. This is not the first time the Secret Service has dealt with Pika-suspects. In September 2014, a man wearing a yellow Pikachu hat and clinging to a yellow Pikachu doll jumped the fence before being apprehended by Secret Service on the North Lawn.
It’s not clear if Combs was inspired by the previous Pokémon incident.
After Combs’ arrest, he told law enforcement he wanted to come back to the White House with his son for a tour.