Man Points Banana at Cop, Gets Arrested

27-year-old Nathen Channing, who is ironically from Fruitsdale, Colorado,  got the fact that police and the country are on edge. In fact, according to to self-described comedian, he was just doing something to make people laugh during tense time.

So, he decided to film a “funny joke” for YouTube that he said was meant to ”lighten the holiday spirit.”

While it is unclear how Channing thought things would go when he decided to point a banana at a cop, the results were not funny at all.

According to the police, they initially thought the jokester had a weapon.

“I observed Nathen reach into the left side of his coat with his right hand and pull out a yellow object, pointing it in the air then in my direction as I approached him,” Deputy Joshua Bunch of the Mesa police wrote in his statement. “Nathen drew the object in the same manner someone would draw a standard handgun from a concealed holster.”

Bunch also said he pointed the object – which turned out to be the banana – directly at an officer.

“Deputy [Donald] Love stated he was in fear for his life at this point, and was in the process of pulling out his hand gun when Nathen yelled ‘It’s a banana!’” Bunch also explained.

To make matters worse, Channing was not even filming when he confronted cops, risking his own life in the process.

“I informed Nathen his reasoning  [about it being an internet joke] did not make [sense] to me since he did not have anything to post on the internet,” Bunch wrote in his report. “Nathen stated he was just completing ‘trial runs’ of the joke.”

Trial run or not, pointing an object at a police officer is not funny as Channing soon realized when he was booked into the county jail on charges of felony menacing.

Photo Credit: Police File Photo