LA PLATA, Md. — A quadruple amputee professional cornhole player acted in self-defense when he shot and killed a passenger in his Tesla during a heated argument, his attorney said Wednesday.
Dayton James Webber, 27, appeared in Charles County District Court via videoconference for the bail review Wednesday, where Judge Patrick Devine noted that he left Maryland after the March 22 shooting of 27-year-old Bradrick Michael Wells and ordered Webber to remain jailed without bail.
Webber, who was extradited from Virginia and is charged with first- and second-degree murder, hasn’t entered a plea yet and is due in court for a May 6 preliminary hearing. He also faces assault and firearm charges.
Defense attorney Andrew Jezic told the court that Webber acted in self-defense and that he anticipates “a lengthy trial” to prove it.
After the hearing, Jezic told reporters that his client was “terrified.”
“The truth here is that he would have been a murder victim if he had not acted immediately in defense of his life,” Jezic said.
Family members of Webber declined to comment after the hearing.
Webber, whose arms and legs were amputated when he was 10 months old to save his life after he contracted a serious blood infection, is accused of shooting Wells, of Waldorf, twice in the head during an argument, according to police charging documents.
Karen Piper Mitchell, deputy state’s attorney in Charles County, talks to reporters after a bail hearing for Dayton James Webber in La Plata, Md., on Wednesday, April 1, 2026. (AP Photo/Brian Witte)
Karen Piper Mitchell, a deputy state’s attorney, said witnesses in the car told authorities the argument was over a gun that a friend of Wells had stolen from Webber, and that Webber was upset Wells was still friends with the thief.
She said Webber and Wells had a history of arguing, including a 2024 incident in which Webber ordered Wells to leave his home. While Wells was leaving, Mitchell said Webber fired a shot from a second floor window. Jezic said Webber fired into the air.
In arguing that Webber should remain in custody, Mitchell noted that he drove to Virginia after the shooting and owns firearms.
Authorities haven’t publicly addressed whether the vehicle’s cameras captured any of what happened or whether self-driving functionality was in use in the Tesla when the shooting occurred.
This photo provided by the Charles County Sheriff’s Office shows Dayton James Webber, 27, who was arrested and charged as a fugitive from justice by police in Albemarle County, Va. on Monday, March 23, 2026. (Charles County Sheriff’s Office via AP)
According to the charging documents, Webber pulled over after the shooting in La Plata, Maryland, and asked two backseat passengers to help pull the victim out, but they refused, got out of the car and flagged down police officers.
Webber fled with the victim still in the car, the Charles County sheriff’s office said. Two hours later, a resident in Charlotte Hall, about 10 miles away, found Wells’ body in a yard along a road and notified officers.
Detectives tracked down Webber’s car in Charlottesville, Virginia, and found Webber at a hospital where he was “seeking treatment for a medical issue,” the sheriff’s office said.
Webber was featured by ESPN in 2023 in a story of inspiration, noting he rode dirt bikes, wrestled and played football before becoming a professional cornhole player. The same year, he wrote an essay for the “Today” show about how he became a professional competitor. He said he learned to grab the bean bag by the corners and throw it using his amputated arms.
It’s not the opening line to a dad joke. If you’re Chesney the kangaroo, you scale an 8-foot fence and go on the lam for three days, giving your keeper sleepless nights and sending residents of a small Wisconsin town on a search that would end happily on Saturday.
The unprecedented leap at Sunshine Farm in Necedah, Wisconsin, last week was precipitated by some stray dogs that rushed the enclosure and spooked the 16-month-old Chesney, said his keeper, Debbie Marland. She and friends then trekked hither and yon in this town about 160 miles northwest of Milwaukee.
They chased reports of sightings and even rented heat-seeking drones, which proved effective in narrowing down the wanderings of the high-jumping adventurer.
“I was putting on about 37,000 steps per day looking for him,” Marland said Sunday. “I haven’t done so much exercise in a very long time.”
Chesney and his roommate Kenny are named for country-music star Kenny Chesney. They’re among 25 animals at Sunshine Farm, with horses, sheep, alpacas, Kunekune pigs, Highland cows and a Bactrian camel. The farm is generally open Fridays through Sundays from mid-May through mid-November and tours are offered to visitors who can interact with the animals.
Chesney escaped about 11:15 a.m. last Wednesday. Though he stayed within a 3-mile radius of the farm, he kept his pursuers guessing.
Colton Johnson, owner of Midwest Aerial Drone Services, has used heat-sensing drones to help hunters recover deer and reunite missing dogs with their owners. Add a kangaroo to the list.
Johnson spent three days trailing Chesney alongside Marland and a team of volunteers. His strategy was similar to the ones he uses to find lost pets, but Johnson said the appearance of Chesney’s heat signature on the drone footage was unique.
“It almost looked like a dinosaur running through the woods,” Johnson said. “It’s got a long tail, and the way it was moving and hopping, that’s the only way that I can describe it.”
This image made from video provided by Debbie Marland shows Chesney the kangaroo near Sunshine Farm, in Necedah, Wis., Saturday, March 28, 2026. (Debbie Marland/Sunshine Farm – Necedah via AP)
The team caught up with Chesney on Wednesday and again Thursday night, but Johnson said the frightened kangaroo slipped away — once by jumping into a cold river — and Johnson lost track on the drone.
According to Marland’s friend, Stacy Brereton, who helps out at the farm routinely, Friday was a tough day. No one had spotted Chesney all day and searchers feared he had wandered farther afield into even more unfamiliar territory, Brereton said.
Then, Friday night, Chesney was discovered nestled under a tree in a wooded area. A group of searchers surrounded him, but ever fleet of foot — 20 mph is no stretch for him — Chesney eluded them.
Marland returned to the area Saturday morning with Chesney’s favorite treats and pieces of material that had his and Kenny’s scent. Other searchers later joined her. But with no sign of the kangaroo, they started packing up. Just then, they spotted the long-eared kangaroo with outsize back legs approaching.
Brereton stepped up with a delicate touch.
“He had a very calm attitude when he walked up, obviously you could tell he wasn’t in fight-or-flight mode, so I just went with that,” Brereton said. “I just stayed calm with him and I just kind of went and sat and let him come to me.”
Chesney heard the voices and wanted attention, said Brereton, who eventually scooped up the 40-pound animal.
“I do believe he heard our comforting voices, he smelled the familiar smells of home and it just made him feel safe,” said Brereton, adding, “I’m just glad he loves me as much as I love him.”
Marland said the “the community really did come together” for the kangaroo, who is now something of a celebrity. A Sunshine Farm fan has written a children’s book about Chesney’s adventures, which Marland hopes to publish and sell to recoup some of the search costs.
Kenny, who with his marsupial mate has the run of Marland’s house, was happy to be reunited with Chesney. Though hungry and tired, Chesney was otherwise healthy but will get a checkup with the veterinarian shortly.
To be safe, Marland added, a new mesh top will be placed over the kangaroo enclosure to prevent any more high-jumping hijinks.
Associated Press writer Savannah Peters in Edgewood, New Mexico, contributed.
General manager John Lynch shared Sunday that an independent scientist deemed the 49ers safe from electromagnetic waves, after conducting tests from the practice fields to the weight room and even the cafeteria.
“He basically (said) it was a big nothing burger. We’re safe. We’re in a safe place of work,” Lynch said at the NFL annual meeting at the Biltmore Resort. “The levels are, I think I read, 400 times less than an unsafe zone. It’s a normal place of work, a normal gym. We’re safe, we’re healthy and we feel really good about that.”
As an injury-riddled 49ers roster lurched into the playoffs, speculation turned to the neighboring power plant’s impact on health, sparked by a social-media thread from wellness entrepreneur Peter Cowan and his use of a gaussmeter outside the facility’s fences.
The 49ers did not share the identity of the independent scientist.
“That (study) was important to us. Not just to turn a blind eye, but to look into it because it’s our players’ wellness, and our coaches’ and staff,” Lynch said. “It’s encouraging it came out in a good place.
“His findings were clear,” Lynch added. “Our facility is safe, exposure level is similar to what you’d experience in a typical workplace or commercial gym.”
In practical terms, more direct exposure would come from using a hair dryer in the morning or waiting in front of a microwave oven for your popcorn to finish.
The NFL Players Association stated ahead of last month’s Super Bowl that it would be following the 49ers’ investigation, which is now complete.
SALINAS — A man from Soledad was arrested Tuesday morning, after showing up to a court hearing at the Salinas Courthouse in a stolen vehicle.
Ricardo Otero, 41, arrived to the Salinas Courthouse at around 11 a.m. Tuesday, where members of the Multi-Agency Detail Combating Auto Theft saw Otero driving a vehicle that had been reported stolen from San Jose.
Otereo was scheduled to appear for a pending auto theft case, according to a press release from the Monterey County Sheriff’s Office.
He was taken into custody without incident and transported to the Monterey County Jail, where he was booked for unlawful driving or taking of a vehicle, commission of a felony while released on bail/own recognizance and driving with a suspended license.
LOS ANGELES — Paul Kovacich, a K-9 commander serving life for his wife’s 1982 murder, has a mixed message for the California parole board ahead of his first chance of freedom: He doesn’t want an early release — and he didn’t kill his beloved German shepherd.
Far from admitting guilt, the 76-year-old argues that newly discovered FBI misconduct should reverse his 2009 conviction in a cold case that haunted the Northern California foothills. His defense team contends that long-suppressed evidence debunks decades-old claims that Kovacich stomped Fuzz, his badge-wearing K-9, to death weeks before his wife disappeared. Her body has never been found.
The dog’s demise became a focal point for the FBI years after Janet Kovacich vanished, as agents exhumed and analyzed Fuzz’s remains in a bid to prove her husband harbored violent tendencies. Paul Kovacich contends that was a red herring that misled jurors into convicting him, and he’s using his first parole hearing Thursday as an opening salvo to clear his name.
“I would love to have the courts release me — not parole,” Kovacich told The Associated Press in an interview this month from the California Institution for Men. “I have something to prove — that I’m innocent.”
Emails from FBI agent’s personal account figure prominently
Kovacich’s bid hinges on never-before-seen emails between a forensic anthropologist and a veteran FBI agent who used his personal Hotmail account to describe Kovacich as “our bad guy” and, before testing, walk the expert through the “need to demonstrate to the jury that he has a violent side.”
The use of a private account excluded those emails from FBI servers and what’s known as Brady material — potentially beneficial evidence turned over to the defense before trial.
“This is a very important aspect to our case,” the now-retired agent, Christopher Hopkins, wrote in 2005 about pinpointing Fuzz’s cause of death. Only months earlier, local police had asked the FBI to reopen the case.
The FBI declined to comment. But current and former agents told AP the messages violate bureau policy, which prohibits the use of personal email for government business unless specifically exempted for undercover activities.
Hopkins, who long worked as a forensic examiner for the FBI, told AP there was “no exculpatory information in those emails.”
“I’m guessing my FBI email had significant restrictions at that time or I sent these emails when I did not have access to my FBI email,” Hopkins wrote in a LinkedIn message. “I don’t need to defend my actions to you.”
David Tellman, who prosecuted Kovacich, said the private emails were “concerning” and could prompt authorities to “investigate the integrity of this conviction.” But he argued the emails wouldn’t have changed the outcome of a four-month trial that featured 77 witnesses, several of whom described Kovacich’s fraught marriage and muted reaction to his wife’s disappearance.
“We are not aware of any new facts that have undermined the evidence on these compelling issues,” Tellman, Placer County’s chief deputy district attorney, told AP.
Prosecutors are opposing parole for Kovacich, saying he failed to complete required domestic violence and anger control classes behind bars.
Search for missing wife comes up empty
Placer County, Calif., Sheriff’s Deputy Paul Kovacich is seen with his K-9 Adoph in 1977. (Auburn Journal via AP)
In Auburn, outside Sacramento, the disappearance of Janet Kovacich has been described as “the case police couldn’t forget” — steeped in mystery and implicating one of law enforcement’s own.
On the morning she was last seen in 1982, Janet Kovacich argued with her husband and said she planned to leave him with their two young children. The night before, she told a friend she was afraid of her husband.
Paul Kovacich, who worked for the Placer County Sheriff’s Office from 1974 to 1992, told authorities he ran errands that morning before stopping by the county jail. He said he returned home to find his wife — and her purse — missing.
Detectives didn’t buy the alibi — defense attorneys say they also failed to investigate it — but lacked any basis to charge Kovacich. Investigators thought it was unlikely Janet Kovacich would willingly leave her children, citing handwritten entries in her journal showing how close they had been.
Auburn police and a dozen other agencies spent thousands of hours searching for the missing woman. Authorities offered a $10,000 reward. Law enforcement combed the canyons of the American River and nearby caves. National Guard planes deployed infrared heat-seeking equipment.
The FBI dug up a yard using ground-penetrating radar and a tool that emits sonar pulses. And nearly a quarter-century after the woman disappeared, an FBI agent rappelled down a mine shaft armed with an underwater camera and what the bureau described as a “human scent vacuum.”
“Years before the victim’s disappearance,” Hopkins explained in FBI records obtained by AP, her husband “told two individuals that he could commit the perfect murder by dumping the murdered victim’s body down a mine shaft.”
A big break came in 1995, months after a judge declared Janet Kovacich legally dead, when hikers found a partial skull at the bottom of a dry lake bed. The skull was missing its lower jaw and teeth but had a hole behind the right ear that authorities attributed to a bullet.
A prosecutor later described that discovery — and the DNA testing that linked the skull to Janet Kovacich in 2007 — as a “pure series of miracles.”
The investigation turns to the death of Fuzz
With a dearth of physical evidence pointing to Paul Kovacich, authorities set their sights on other skeletal remains: the K-9 known as Fuzz. Kovacich long maintained the dog had been poisoned in 1982, but the FBI and others close to Janet Kovacich were convinced the lawman kicked the dog to death while disciplining it for getting into some garbage.
“I loved that dog,” Kovacich told AP. “He was a bundle of energy and a pure beauty.”
The bureau exhumed Fuzz’s remains, kept intact by a plastic trash bag, in 2005 and sent them to a bone trauma expert for analysis. That’s where the agent’s private emails become relevant, Kovacich’s defense team contends.
The expert couldn’t determine what, exactly, killed the dog in 1982 but found no signs it had been stomped to death — a finding Kovacich’s defense team says Hopkins suppressed in his personal emails. The analysis also found an undigested pork rib bone in Fuzz’s remains that the defense contends caused the dog’s death.
“I cannot imagine a more clearly documented or egregious Brady violation,” defense attorney Kristen Reid wrote to state prosecutors. “Special Agent Hopkins not only suppressed material physical and forensic evidence that would have raised doubts about guilt, he hid proof of actual innocence — helping the real killer escape justice.”
Kovacich’s defense team has urged authorities to investigate whether Janet Kovacich actually was targeted by the notorious Golden State Killer, Joseph DeAngelo, who patrolled the area around the Kovacich home before he was fired from the Auburn Police Department. DeAngelo crossed paths with Kovacich on a case involving his other K-9 German shepherd, Adolph.
A judge in 2009 sentenced Kovacich to 27 years to life in prison for first-degree murder, calling the killing “cold, calculated and selfish.”
“It’s hard being in here for something I didn’t do,” Kovacich told AP. “But if we can prove all the misconduct in this case, this will have all been worth it. It’s going to open a can of worms.”
A Florida woman was convicted of involuntary manslaughter Monday for administering illegal gluteal injections to a woman — cultivating a career as a Kim Kardashian lookalike — who then died the next day due to complications from the procedure, prosecutors said.
Vivian Alexandra Gomez, 53, was also convicted of practicing medicine without a license and enhancements for causing great bodily injury related to the procedure that caused the death of Christina Gourkani, 34, according to the San Mateo County District Attorney’s Office.
“This is one where we don’t have a lot of experience. We’ve done involuntary manslaughters loads of times, but one like this was new for us,” said San Mateo County District Attorney Stephen Wagstaffe. “We weren’t confident which way the jury would go, but the jury clearly had no trouble with it. They deliberated for just three hours and arrived at their guilty verdicts.”
“The bottom line to it was that, this time (Gomez) injected not silicone, but a drug into a human being, and that human being immediately reacted and was dead the next day,” he added. “A human being lost their life.”
Geoff Carr and May Mar, Gomez’s defense attorneys, said that Gomez took the news of her conviction “stoically.” Carr added that Gomez feels “sad” and “personally responsible.”
During the trial, they argued that there were “interesting issues about causation” – whether the gluteal injections of a product called Biosil directly caused the medical issues that killed Gourkani, Carr said.
“The question was, what exactly had killed the woman?” Carr said. “Not whether our client did something, but whether what our client did actually kill her.”
Carr added that there was also not further investigation into what was actually in what Gomez injected. She believed it was Biosil, which is at times marketed as being made with silicone and at times marketed as not being made with silicone. Gomez “may have been injecting silicone not knowing about it,” or the product may have not been what it was represented as, he said.
The drug that Gomez injected was “something in the silicon family,” Wagstaffe said.
The procedure is not approved by the Food and Drug Administration due to its health danger, prosecutors said.
“She had no license at all to do it,” Wagstaffe added.
Carr said that Gomez learned to do the procedure in Colombia, where it is legal, and had been offering it on and off for about ten years.
Gomez could face up to seven years in prison pending her sentencing, prosecutors said.
The jury came to its verdict after a 15 day trial, prosecutors said. The trial was overseen by San Mateo County Superior Court Judge Leland Davis.
Gomez, a resident of Palm Beach, Florida, ran an unlicensed cosmetology business in her home state, prosecutors said. On April 19, 2023, Gomez flew to San Francisco International Airport to meet Gourkani, who hired her to administer the gluteal injections.
Gomez, Gourkani and Gourkani’s fiancé met at a hotel in Burlingame, where Gomez administered the injections, prosecutors said.
Gourkani “quickly fell very ill,” prosecutors added, prompting her fiancé to call 911. Gourkani was taken to the Mills Peninsula Hospital, where she died one day later due to a pulmonary embolism and respiratory failure.
Gomez left California and returned to Florida, where she was soon arrested and extradited to San Mateo County.
Wagstaffe said that other women Gomez had previously done the procedure on complained that it made them “feel poorly.” Carr added that previous clients of the procedure developed infections and lumpiness at the site of the injections.
Gomez will next appear in court May 5 for her sentencing. She remains in custody on no bail status. She was previously out on $200,000 bail.
Wagstaffe said that Davis’ decision to remand Gomez into custody is indicative that he “equally views this as a very serious conviction.”
A man who gained acclaim as a professional cornhole player despite having no arms or legs has been accused of fatally shooting an acquaintance during a dispute in a car.
The shooting was reported by two people who flagged down a police car around 10:25 p.m. Sunday, March 22, in La Plata, Maryland. They said they had been in the back seat of a car when the driver, whom they identified as Dayton Webber, shot the front-seat passenger. When Webber pulled over and told them to remove the victim, they said, they got out and refused to help. He reportedly drove off with the other passenger.
Nearly two hours later, a resident called 911 to report a dead person in a yard 11 miles away. It was the passenger, Bradrick Michael Wells, 27, the sheriff’s report said. A warrant was obtained for Webber’s arrest.
Webber, 27, is a quadruple amputee; his forearms and lower legs were amputated when he suffered an infection as an infant, he said in a 2023 essay for the Today show’s website. He eschews prosthetics in American Cornhole League competitions, in which players throw beanbags through a hole. He told Today that he taught himself to drive, and a video titled “No Hands No Feet Shooting” on his YouTube channel shows him firing a 9-millimeter handgun.
After the discovery of Wells’ body, Webber’s car was spotted Monday morning 100 miles away, in Charlottesville, Va., and he was found seeking treatment for an undisclosed condition at a hospital, the sheriff’s office said. He was arrested and held for extradition to Maryland, where he faces charges including first-degree murder.
A court battle over the use of a judge’s middle name on the ballot is heating up a normally sedate Orange County judicial race, with one candidate accusing his opponent of “hiding behind a misleading name” and an attorney for an incumbent judge questioning whether she is being targeted for a “foreign-sounding name.”
Charles Pell, in a lawsuit filed against the Orange County Registrar of Voters, is challenging his opponent’s effort to appear on the ballot as “Ami S. Sagel” rather than her full name of Amy Sheth Sagel. Pell is challenging Sagel for the Orange County Superior Court judge position that Sagel currently holds.
Pell, a veteran federal prosecutor, alleges that Sagel is “attempting to appear on the June 2, 2026, primary ballot under a previously unused name that is not the one voters know,” contending that she has “for years been known professionally, publicly and judicially” as ‘Ami Sheth Sagel.”
Sagel, in her own court filings, counters that the “use of one’s proper middle initial is not misleading.” Sagel also alleged in court records that a decade ago, Pell advised a colleague “that the way to win a judicial election was to target judges with ‘f—-d up names,’ ” adding that “Ten years later, he is trying to take his own advice.”
County Registrar Bob Page’s office has not taken a side in the lawsuit but has asked for a prompt court decision in order for the office to get the county’s voter information guide printed and released on time.
The lawsuit was assigned to a San Bernardino judge to avoid any conflict of interest in the Orange County courts.
During a hearing Friday afternoon, Sagel’s attorney, Mark Rosen, told Superior Court Judge Wilfred J. Schneider Jr., “We think it’s an open-and-shut case” because there is no violation of election law …
“The candidate gets to choose which name is on the ballot, not the opponent,” as long as there is no intent to mislead, Rosen said.
“This is such a trivial lawsuit,” Rosen continued. “She is being picked on because she used a foreign-sounding name, and we can only wonder what the motivation is.”
Rosen later said outside court that he believes Orange County voters, who have elected lawmakers such as Rep. Young Kim and Rep. Dave Min, would not likely reject Sagel for her national origin.
Sheth is of Indian origin, Sagel said after the hearing. Her parents were born in the Asian country, she said.
Pell’s attorney, Bradley W. Hertz, told Judge Schneider that there was no racist intent behind their challenge to Sagel’s ballot designation.
“The name could be Jones or Smith or any other name,” Hertz said. “We believe the use of the name should be consistent.”
Pell, in an interview after the hearing, said he believes Sagel should use the name by which she is known as a judge: Amy Sheth Sagel. that’s how it is listed in the Orange County Superior Court judicial assignments.
Pell said he initially planned to stay retired.
“I still looked out there and I saw the opportunity,” Pell said. “She was one of the only ones that was recently appointed (2023). She had bad ratings (from people who appeared before her in Family Law Court). So that’s why I focused on her. Our whole argument is this: If you choose to invoke the position you have, judge of the Superior Court, then you should have to use that (name).”
There was also discussion about Pell’s ballot designation, which has been approved as Federal Criminal Prosecutor. Pell retired in September 2025
Hertz suggested a compromise: Pell would change his designation to retired federal prosecutor if Sagel would use her full name on the ballot.
“It’s not really splitting the baby,” Hertz told the judge. “It’s giving everybody a baby.”
Rosen rejected the offer.
Deputy Orange County Counsel Suzanne Shoai told Schneider that they needed the ruling by March 27. Schneider said he hoped to post his ruling online by Monday.
Pell and Sagel are both long-time members of the local legal community, who have crossed professional paths during tenures at the local U.S. Attorney’s Office.
Sagel was a federal prosecutor for five years before starting her own private legal practice and then being appointed as a judge in the Orange County Superior Court by Gov. Gavin Newsom in 2023.
Pell spent 20 years as a federal prosecutor, in recent years leading public corruption cases against former Orange County Supervisor Andrew Do and former Anaheim Mayor Harry Sidhu.
In response to Pell’s lawsuit, Sagel wrote in her own court filings that her maiden name is Ami Harshad Sheth, but that she took her husband’s last name when they were married in 2013. Her husband, Brett Sagel, is also a veteran federal prosecutor known for high-profile white-collar-crime cases who previously worked in the same U.S. Attorney’s Office as Pell.
Sagel wrote that she sometimes uses her full name — such as on legal documents — and sometimes uses Ami Sagel or Ami S. Sagel, “consistent with how all of us exercise control over how our names are rendered in different contexts.”
Pell — in contending that Sagel is using a “never-before-used variant” of her name “created solely for this election” — contends in his court filing that he wasn’t challenging a “minor formatting issue,” but instead arguing that “voters in a judicial race are entitled to accurate identifying information.” Pell accused Sagel of “running away from her record,” which he alleged “paints a picture of someone who doesn’t have a good temperament.”
Another former colleague of Pell’s in a written statement to the court submitted by Sagel recalls that in February 2016, Pell gave her the unsolicited advice that she should consider running for election against a sitting judge with “a f—-d up name.”
Sagel wrote that she was “deeply troubled” by Pell’s argument since she was “generally aware of the historic practice of highlighting a candidate’s foreign-sounding name as a disadvantage in elections and of placing at issue how a woman’s name should appear on a ballot.”
With a gut-wrenching wail that rippled from her body, Amber Walcker joined about a dozen screaming people in West Seattle who let their frustrations float away over the Puget Sound.
It was just the start. The two group screams that followed, each one longer and more intense, released the pain from Walcker’s recent job loss. Her added stress from raising two young children dissolved as it blended with the sound of lapping water, and a deep sense of calm descended upon her.
“I had such a sense of feeling grounded. In that same moment, all your senses are heightened,” Walcker said. “From then on out, I was hooked.”
That day in September was the first meeting of Seattle’s chapter of Scream Club, one of 17 chapters that have popped up in less than a year around the United States, including in Austin, Texas; Chattanooga, Tennessee; Atlanta; Detroit; and San Juan, Puerto Rico.
Scream Club participants scream together in Piedmont Park, Sunday, March 8, 2026, in Atlanta. (AP Photo/Emilie Megnien)
How it all started
The first chapter, in Chicago, began as a result of a couple’s rough patch.
Co-founders Manny Hernandez and Elena Soboleva had recently moved in together after dating long-distance for a year and a half. They were walking along Lake Michigan when Hernandez, a breathwork practitioner and men’s coach, suggested they let out all their frustrations with a scream at the end of a pier.
When they asked permission of the few people around, everyone decided to scream together, their raw emotion echoing over the water.
“After we did it, some people were crying, including Elena,” Hernandez said. “That’s when we looked at each other and said, ‘This is probably something that we should start.’”
Sarah Woolson participates in a Scream Club meeting at Piedmont Park, Sunday, March 8, 2026, in Atlanta. (AP Photo/Emilie Megnien)
How it works
Depending on the chapter, Scream Club meetings can be weekly or monthly, but they always take place in a park or near a body of water to minimize disturbance. Sessions typically begin with participants writing down the thing they want to release on biodegradable paper.
That’s followed by a series of collective deep breaths and vocal warm-ups, such as humming while breathing in and out.
“You can really strain your throat if you just do it,” said Soboleva, a personal brand and business mentor. “So it’s gradual, breathing from your diaphragm and carefully starting off slow and warming up to louder and louder.”
Everyone screams together three times, taking several deep breaths in between, and throws their paper into the water.
“That third scream, you have to feel it in your body,” said Walcker, who started the club’s Seattle chapter. “Get down, be in a primal stance, whatever it feels like to you in that moment.”
Fernando Coria and Sarah Woolson look at the skyline after screaming in Piedmont Park, Sunday, March 8, 2026, in Atlanta. (AP Photo/Emilie Megnien)
What’s to gain
The Scream Club’s techniques are descendant of primal scream therapy, a theory that Los Angeles psychoanalyst Arthur Janov devised in the 1960s. Janov believed childhood trauma created neuroses in adults, which could be treated by tapping into the pain and releasing it with screaming and crying under a therapist’s supervision.
Research in the decades since, however, has not found scream therapy to be an effective treatment for mental health conditions, said Ashwini Nadkarni, a psychiatry professor at Harvard Medical School.
Nadkarni said the scream itself engages circuits in the amygdala and the hippocampus — “the oldest part of our brain” that is responsible for processing stress and emotion. Screaming also activates the sympathetic nervous system, or fight-or-flight stress response. Once the screaming stops, the parasympathetic system kicks in, which signals the body to rest.
“It’s the same cycle of regulation that happens when you exercise,” she said. “Your heart’s racing, you get short of breath, and then you relax and you feel that calm.”
Besides the physical release, the simple act of getting together to do something with others provides benefits.
“The idea of people getting together to enhance community in ways that help them blow off some steam is incredible,” she said.
Why people come
Hernandez said it’s not standard practice to publicly share the reasons for coming, but many people linger afterward and talk about their problems. Some at the Chicago chapter recently lost a loved one, one person was battling cancer for a second time and many were struggling with relationships.
Walcker noted that some people even come to scream for joy. Whatever the reason, the Seattle chapter usually meets just before sunset to watch the sun dip below the water afterward.
“It’s kind of like putting everything to rest,” she said. “And that everyone knows that that’s the end of that, and we can all start fresh.”
“WTTTTFFFFF …. What did I do to these people….. This is an attack….. Who in the f–k is this?????? At this point these museums are just trying to make me cry,” Hart said, followed by a pouting emoji and several crying laughing ones. “This s–t has to stop…. I demand a redo damn it!!!!!!!!”
“You asked for Kevin Hart and got Kevin The Weeknd,” commented Dave Ogleton, also known as FitDad.
“Jersey Shore” star Jenni “JWOWW” Farley predicted that Hart’s frequent collaborator, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson “had something to do with this.”
One user said the figure is “temu af,” referring to the discounted online marketplace.
Another joked Hart should “sue them for defamation of character. Immediately.”
Among the most notorious of wax figure blunders in semi-recent memory was one of Beyoncé, which Madame Tussauds New York had to briefly remove in 2017, amid critiques the figure more resembled Britney Spears and Kaley Cuoco than the Grammy-winning “Cowboy Carter” superstar.
