Free game consoles and the chance to see social media star Kai Cena drew a square in New York full of young people, but soon the situation got out of hand.
In New York, complete chaos broke out in Manhattan’s Union Square on Friday afternoon local time, according to reports, among others The New York Timesnews agency Reuters and the British Broadcasting Corporation BBC.
The events started spontaneously when a popular streamer I guess Cena announced that it will be giving away 300 free PlayStation 5 game consoles in the busy Union Square.
The consoles were supposed to be distributed at four in the afternoon, but according to the BBC, an estimated 2,000 people had already arrived before that, and according to The New York Times, thousands.
Many came hoping for a free game console, but some just wanted to see a glimpse of Cenat. He has 3.6 million followers on the video service YouTube and 6.5 million on the game streaming service Twitch. The man who arrived there describes Cenat to The New York Times as “the biggest black influencer of the moment”.
The crowd stopped traffic and became violent
The situation turned into chaos when people packed from the full square to the adjacent streets and blocked the traffic. Aukio’s country market had to be closed.
According to the police, at this point, some people began to “behave unruly”: They threw things, broke into the adjacent construction site, shot fireworks at people and climbed onto the roof of the metro station entrance. The subway began to run past Union Square station without stopping.
In the New York police, the disturbance was classified as a top-level task and about a thousand police officers were called to the area. Several people were arrested.
In the end, Kai Cena was also dragged to Maija, who is facing a charge of organizing a riot. He had not asked the city for permission to organize the event.
– The situation was out of control. It took us a long time to get it under control, and many young people were injured, described the police chief Jeffrey Maddrey at a news conference on Friday evening.
The police arrested 65 people
The crowd tried to resist the police by pushing them from the riot shields and insulting them. Driven to the side street, people knelt and shouted the slogan “Black Lives Matter”, which takes a stand against police racism.
During the trouble, 65 people were arrested, almost half of them minors. Both the participants and the police were beaten and businesses in the area were vandalized. According to The New York Times, the youths stole candy from stores and distributed it to the crowd. Others took the portions from people having lunch on the terraces.
– We have seen something similar before, but we did not see dangerous cases where young people do not listen to our orders, Maddrey said according to the BBC.