YouTuber Detained By Police On Live Stream

Daniel Desmond Amofah, better known as former popular YouTuber and streamer Etika, was detained by police yesterday in Brooklyn during a live stream on Instagram with over 19,000 viewers.

The stream in question only lasted 45 minutes, which began with Etika talking with the police and ending with him being escorted out of his apartment. During the stream, Etika switched from moments of pointing his phone’s camera on his face and the police cars gathered underneath his apartment.

A team of what seems to be a SWAT team equipped with riot shields entered his apartment to detain Etika after they received calls that he was threatening to harm himself and contemplating suicide (via Kotaku).

Unfortunately, this wasn’t the first time that Etika has experienced mental health problems. In October 2018, he uploaded pornography on his YouTube channel, resulting in it getting shut down. As recently as earlier this month in April 2019, he posting suicidal remarks online, saying “And now, it’s my turn to die. I love you all.”

Fellow YouTuber and friend Sky Williams also discovered yesterday that he was blocked by Etika on Twitter, prompting him to tweet this response.

people keep waking me up because etika continues to exhibit frightening behavior but i can’t do anything at all now and i’m sorry i couldn’t get through to him.

just let me sleep, please.

I have nothing else to say about this.

I will not discuss this further than this tweet.

— ♡♪!? (@SkyWilliams) April 29, 2019

Mental health issues are not something to be taken lightly and they’re a serious problem, especially so for YouTubers and game streamers who are expected to churn out constant quality content or stream games for hours at a time. Fans sometimes make it worse by putting more pressure on these folks, or even harassing them online.

Etika is now free and back home, freely tweeting about what happened to him. Here’s one of his many tweets, in which he wants to press charges against the individual who called the police in the first place.

I would like to press charges against the individual that claimed I was suicidal to Swat my home. You destroyed my property, wasted the New York City Police Department’s time, and my own personal time. You cost this city tens of thousands of dollars.

I will be pressing charges.

— *^!Etika (@Etika) April 30, 2019