Atlanta Man Arrested For Threatening To Blow Up Tyler Perry Studios, Report Says

A man was arrested after he threatened to blow up Tyler Perry Studios in Atlanta nearly two weeks ago, police said. 

Authorities said the man, identified as Coles Arrasheed, was taken into custody for making terroristic threats against the movie mogul’s studio, located in Southwest Atlanta, TMZ reported. 

In the report, Arrasheed called the studio on May 13 and spoke with a receptionist, insisting on speaking with Perry. After the person said he could not talk to the 52-year-old, Coles became upset and spoke in muddled sentences.

While the receptionist hung up and blocked the suspect’s number, she discovered that he had left a voicemail threatening to destroy the property. The report stated that she eventually called the Atlanta Police Department and informed them about the incident. 

Police arrested Arrasheed and transported him to Fulton County Jail, where he was charged with making terroristic threats to the building. He was later released on a $5,000 bond. 

According to Georgia law, a person convicted

of the crime can be punished with a fine of $1,000 or a maximum sentence of five years in prison. 

Perry’s studio was originally the Fort McPherson Army Base from 1885 to 2011. Before its closure, the location was one of the largest command centers in the U.S. military, according to his website. In June 2015, the Madea star purchased the 330-acre lot and transformed it into 12 studios with multiple backlots, marking it as the only major movie studio on the east coast and one of the largest in the world. 

In 2019, the New Orleans native held a grand opening for the property with A-list celebrities, including Whoopi Goldberg, Oprah, Beyonce, and Jay-Z, Essence magazine reported.

 

“When I built my studio, [it was in the] poorest Black neighborhood in Atlanta so the kids can see that a Black man did that and they can too,” Perry said during his acceptance speech at the 2020 BET Awards.