Chester Bennington's son Jaime says his fans are telling him to “kill myself”

A day after Jaime Bennington, the son of late Linkin Park lead singer Chester Bennington, criticized the band for its decision to hire new lead singer Emily Armstrong, the 28-year-old scion said his fans now wished him dead.

“All these people come up to me and say, 'You don't know what your father would think,'” the younger Bennington shared on social media. “You come to my posts and livestreams and tell me to kill myself, I'm horrible, my father doesn't value me. What are you talking about? You didn't give a shit when he died. If you didn't, you would understand what the problem is. You would understand why this is all wrong. I understand because I'm his child.”

For so-called fans to encourage Bennington to commit suicide is even more heinous – or at least thoughtless – given that his father committed suicide seven years ago. Now the younger Bennington says he no longer feels safe.

“There's a lot of people that don't like me. There's a lot of people that are saying really horrible things about me right now,” he shared on social media, before saying he plans to go to the band's reunion concert tomorrow to get closure on the matter. If he does that, though, it seems he'll have to buy himself a ticket. That option comes with its own concerns, he said.

“Honestly, I don't think I feel safe watching the show standing up because I don't know who is around me. I don't know who would recognize me or react aggressively to me if I'm just there to watch the show. But I have to see it.”

More specifically, he says he doesn't feel safe around fans who may have done this.

“The audience itself could be dangerous for me… I feel it is necessary to acknowledge the seriousness of my situation, the way people treat me. So many of these Linkin Park fans who are going to come have been cruel, unusual and aggressive.”

“If anything happens to me or my partner while attending the concert, it will be at Linkin Park’s expense,” he warned.

The whole dispute erupted after Linkin Park hired Armstrong and it came to light that she had ties to Scientology and supported Danny Masterson during his sexual assault trial. Armstrong later distanced herself from Masterson in a statement, saying she did not understand the seriousness of the allegations at the time.

“I do not tolerate abuse or violence against women and have compassion for the victims of these crimes,” she wrote.