YouTuber Alexander Zabel Jr. was arrested outside the Tucson, Arizona, home of Nancy Guthrie, the missing mother of Today co-anchor Savannah Guthrie, after authorities said they received multiple complaints from neighbors.
The 54-year-old was taken into custody Thursday just before 5 p.m. local time. In a statement, the Pima County Sheriff’s Department said deputies responded after receiving reports about Zabel’s behavior while he was outside the property.
“PCSD had received several complaints regarding Mr. Zabel’s behavior. At the time of the incident, Mr. Zabel was live-streaming from outside the residence,” the statement said per Hello.
“Deputies made contact with him and, during the arrest process, a PCSD sergeant was knocked to the ground. Mr Zabel was subsequently taken into custody without further incident and booked into the Pima County Adult Detention Complex. He is facing charges of resisting arrest and public nuisance.”
The arrest was the second for Alexander in the same week. The creator of the CriminalNetwork YouTube channel was also arrested Monday and charged with two counts of obstructing a highway or thoroughfare and one count of public nuisance.
Fellow streamers Troy Lewis Bradshaw and Damian Todd Enderle were also arrested near Nancy Guthrie’s home on Monday and cited for public nuisance.
In a statement, the Pima County Sheriff’s Department said deputies first issued warnings, posted no-trespassing signs and handed out citations before making arrests. “Despite those efforts, some individuals continued to disregard the law,” the statement said, adding that Sheriff Chris Nanos “will no longer tolerate behavior that disrupts the community or violates the law.”
Nanos also told KVOA on Wednesday that authorities had repeatedly tried to work with the streamers and YouTubers who gathered outside the home after Nancy’s disappearance, but many ignored those warnings.
“We started getting calls from the neighbors about a certain group of these, I’ll use the word, YouTubers, but the complaints got to be pretty egregious in that the behavior of those individuals was becoming pretty scary, pretty frightful to the neighborhood,” Sheriff Nanos said.
Alexander’s latest arrest came just one day after a search was launched in northern Mexico following an anonymous tip about Nancy Guthrie’s possible whereabouts. According to local reports, volunteers with the missing persons group Buscando Corazones searched an area known as Mariposa, near the Arizona border, after receiving information that Nancy could be buried there. The group said it found no evidence linked to the 84-year-old but vowed to continue searching.
Nancy disappeared from her Tucson home on February 1, and investigators believe she was kidnapped. No arrests have been made in the case. One of the few pieces of evidence released publicly is FBI doorbell camera footage showing a masked person wearing gloves and a holstered gun approaching her home and apparently trying to disable the camera.
