Jeremy Meeks, a convicted felon whose hot mug shot went viral this week, is speaking out from jail about his bizarre 15 minutes of fame - and his incarceration.
Speaking to ABC's local affiliate in Sacramento, Calif., Jeremy Meeks said that he learned of his sudden Internet popularity after chatting with his wife.
Yes, he's married. Sorry ladies.
"Well I appreciate [the attention]," Meeks, 30, said from behind a glass wall. "But I just want them to know that this is really not me, I'm not some kingpin."
Meeks' mugshot set the Internet ablaze after the Stockton, Calif., Police Department posted his picture to its official Facebook page on Wednesday.
Meeks and four others were arrested in a gang-related bust, dubbed Operation Ceasefire, a combined effort between federal and local police authorities.
His mom Katherine Angier insists her son is no thug, though, talking to the web to plead her case. "Please help," Angier wrote of her son's $900,000 (!!) bail.
"My son was taken into custody on his way to work," Meeks' mother adds. "He is a working man with a son. He is being stereotyped due to old tattoos."
"He's my son and he is so sweet," she wrote.
Meeks' mother posted photos of Jeremy with his little boy, 3, pleading his case to the public: "Please help him to get a fair trial or else he'll be railroaded."
As of Friday afternoon, she's raised $418.
Meeks' sister, meanwhile, says that Meeks was only armed at the time for protection purposes and has been a practicing Christian for seven years.
He's also been married four years and is a good family man, she insists, though Stockton PD spokesman Joseph Silva counters that Meeks is no saint.
In fact, the police say he's "one of the most violent criminals in the Stockton area." Not a model citizen, they say, even if he has model-good looks.
Devin Langford, a drunk man in custody, tried to urinate out of the rear passenger side window of a moving police car because he was drunk. It did not go as planned.
