Influencer’s Meet and Great Becomes Massive Brawl, Says She Warned Police of Crowd Size

Anna Paul, who the Daily Mail described as Australia's "No. 1 Only Fans star" is an influence with millions of followers on various social media platforms: over 5 million on TikTok and 2+ million on Instagram (as of this writing).

Recently she held a meet and greets for fans in three Australian cities: Sydney, Melbourne, and Perth with a stipulation that the first two hundred folks who showed up were guaranteed time to talk to her and her team.

The events were part of a partnership Anna has with the clothing brand Stax (which she now has her own line of merchandise with) and ended up with turnouts way higher than anticipated. The number of folks who ended up in Perth culminated in a massive security risk that forced authorities to evacuate folks from the area.

Reports indicate that there were mass brawls, with folks pushing/striking one another and tossing cans of deodorant about. One TikToker said that they made the 200-person cut-off to meet with Anna at the event, but she fainted during the kerfuffle, resulting in a trip to the emergency room.

Perth authorities told Insider that they only expected some 200-300 people to attend the meet-and-greet, however, the situation soon became out of control, necessitating the need for ambulances as multiple people collapsed in the venue.

Western Australia's statement to the outlet read: "Due to the size of the crowd and lack of appropriate security and other event planning in place to cope with the larger than expected crowd, and in consultation with the store management, the event was closed down and police commenced dispersing the crowd from the area."

However, Anna averred in a TikTok post that she and her team, along with Stax, worked to ensure that there was adequate private security personnel and that they notified Perth police as to the potentially massive turnout judging from the crowds that their previous events in Melbourne and Sydney brought in.

The Influencer said: "Yesterday we did a meet and greet in Perth and we accidentally shut down the city. So we're gonna talk about how that happened, why it happened...the most important thing out of this whole experience is that nobody got seriously injured."

She continued, "That's all we cared about and the fact that nobody got seriously injured we're so grateful for that. So we planned a meet and greet in three cities with Stax: Sydney, Melbourne, and Perth. We said that the first two hundred people were guaranteed to meet us and that's all we said."

"So, for Sydney, more than two hundred people lined up which was a surprise I thought only like a hundred people would come I don't know why...so when in Sydney people started lining up we were shocked and we were like OK let's stay back, let's stay longer so we can meet as many people as possible. And I think we met around seven hundred of you."

The Influencer went on to say that because so many more people showed up than expected at the Sydney meet and greet which they didn't think would have a good turnout, they decided to beef up their security for the Melbourne event, which ended up having a higher turnout than they expected "as well."

This is when they decided to go even bigger for Perth, "Let's tell the police, let's have everybody ready. We hired extra, extra security for Perth," adding that local authorities knew there might be a large turnout "from the start."

"They were actually really happy, they said thank you for doing this for the city and we're here for you," a man seated behind Anna in the video said.

Anna said that the crowd in Perth, prior to the fights breaking out were exceptionally nice, with folks creating a numbered system while in line so folks could hold their spots: "In Perth people were so nice, they even started numbering themselves from one to two hundred in the line so that the first two hundred could meet us...they were so organized, so sweet."

"Stax organized so much security, that I thought it was overkill...the cops are here everybody is ready. We start doing the meet and greet and it was good for the first twenty minutes and then the cops said OK we have to shut this down. There's too many people, we've never seen anything like this. The last time we saw something like this was like for a Justin Bieber concert. We have never seen anything like this."

She went on to say that the meet-and-greet was ultimately shut down by authorities for "safety reasons." The TikToker went on to say that the owner of Stax was willing to get all of the security that Perth has to come to the event to help maintain crowd control, but the police were adamant in not allowing the event to go on.

She explains her reasoning for working with authorities to shut the event down: "Is because we didn't want anything bad happening. Cause your safety is our number one priority. We were so disappointed and we feel like we let you down but we wanted to make the event free. We didn't want you to have to pay to see us."

Towards the end of the video she expressed that perhaps a "ticketed" system wouldn't helped to alleviate the number of folks who showed up and assist with overall crowd control. "In the future we will be definitely organizing it for a way bigger crowd 'cause we honestly had no idea how it would turn out."