After New York City police said officers were hurt being pelted with snow and ice during a massive snowball fight in Washington Square Park during NYC’s blizzard, a 27-year-old man has been arrested.
In a brief post, NYPD said the man was arrested for “assaulting our officers” without releasing additional information, including what the man was charged with.
The arrest came days after videos of Monday’s snowball fight went viral online, with one clip showing two officers getting bombarded by snowballs by a rowdy crowd. The officers shoved at least two people to the ground as they paced a walkway in the park, getting hit from all directions by snowballs.
Mayor Zohran Mamdani, a Democrat, played down the fracas as a “snowball fight that got out of hand” and suggested he did not think criminal charges were warranted. His office didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment Thursday morning.
Information on whether the man had an attorney was not available following his arrest.
The department said multiple officers were hit in the face with snowballs, and a spokesperson for the union has said two police officers were treated at a nearby hospital for face, head and neck injuries.
The city’s police department has pursued the matter, releasing images of four people it said it was searching for. Jessica Tisch, the police commissioner, has called the snowball fight “disgraceful” and “criminal.”
Monday’s storm blanketed the region with snow, canceled flights, disrupted transit, downed power lines and killed at least one person. More than 3 feet (0.9 meters) fell in Rhode Island — surpassing snow totals from the historic Blizzard of 1978 that struck the Northeast, the National Weather Service said.
Cellphones across New York City received wailing push alerts Sunday night announcing a ban on non-emergency travel on all streets through noon Monday because of “dangerous blizzard conditions.” Rhode Island and New Jersey implemented similar restrictions.
Regional airports saw widespread cancellations and delays, and public transit was suspended in some areas.
