The net craves nothing more than a scandal, and this week it was social media fixated over Power Book II: Ghost actress Alix Lapri, whose given name is Alexus Geier, after what appeared to be a mugshot of the actress went viral. The assertion? That the 28-year-old singer and actress from Topeka was arrested on August 18 in DeKalb County, Georgia, on charges of child cruelty and disorderly conduct.
A Rumor and a Mugshot
The chaos began when there was a supposed arrest report uploaded on a news website called The Georgia Gazette wherein “Alexus Geier” was reported to have been booked. In a move to further obscure the news, there was a mugshot on the Web with the charges that had fans believing the love interest on the Starz wildly acting Power spin-off Effie Morales actor Tariq St. Patrick was arrested.
Then Twitter, TikTok, and Instagram came along and did what comes naturally to them: spreading the news like gospel, where the hashtags around Lapri’s supposed fall went viral overnight.
The Facts: Receipts Don’t Match
This is where it gets tricky. Although the arrest record went live on the internet, there is no credible news outlet or verified medium that has reported Alix Lapri was arrested. Actually, the social media history of the woman indicates something entirely different.
It was on August 21 when five days after she was purportedly arrested, Lapri posted a hilarious video clip of herself partying at a bar.
She posted on Instagram a recent Carousel featuring behind-scenes footage from the shooting on the location of her recent acting project. Captioned:
“gotta keep at it buddy. chase the dream and know no fear.”
Not exactly words spoken from the confines of the county jail.
Why Fans Got Hooked on It
The early panic was probably due to poor timing and the rumor mill that is the web. There is an “Alexus Geier” on Georgia’s DeKalb County arrest database. But is she the Alix Lapri, the 1.3 million Instagram-followed Hollywood starlet, we can’t confirm. And if the web action was any indicator, she was neither locked up nor holed up but on set, still going for the goal.
