A 71-year-old man is accused of pointing a long gun at a group of youth who were reportedly playing tag near his St. Paul home last weekend.

The males and females, who ranged from 11 to 15, didn’t realize the weapon — which police said was manufactured to look like a real hunting rifle — was a BB gun and they were so frightened they ran away, according to a criminal complaint filed Monday, which charges Robin Lee Frits with two counts of terroristic threats.

After police arrested Frits on Saturday at 7:50 p.m., he told them, “So they can terrorize the neighborhood, but I’m going to jail,” the complaint said.

Police responded to a gun-pointing incident in the Payne-Phalen area and were told Frits became upset by the noise the young people were making in the alley behind his home and garage.

He yelled at them several times, “It’s time to go!,” the complaint said.

The youth ignored him and continued running around, chasing each other, and laughing and yelling in the alley on Hawthorne Avenue, a couple of blocks from Arcade Street. They ran away after Frits pointed a long gun at them, “racked” it and repeated his order to leave, the complaint said.

The young people reported the same man yelled at them in the past for playing in the alley and when they walked to school in the morning. Their residences back up to the alley where Frits’ garage is.

After police arrested Frits, he reported at least 10 kids were running through yards, the alley and at the end of his driveway.

He said they were “yelling, screaming and fighting” and “this commotion had continued for three hours,” according to the complaint. Frits said he was next to his garage when a youth asked what he was looking at and started “bad-mouthing” him, which is when he told them to leave, but they did not.

“Frits said in his ‘stupidity’ he went in his garage, picked up his long BB gun, came out the service door into his backyard, and held the BB gun in the air,” the complaint continued. He said he did not point the BB gun or make threats with it.