NEW YORK (AP) — A 27-year-old man was arrested Thursday after New York City police said officers were hurt when they were pelted with snow and ice during a massive snowball fight in Washington Square Park this week.
The New York Police Department said the man, Gusmane Coulibaly, was charged with assaulting a police officer, obstructing governmental administration and disorderly conduct. The case did not yet appear in the city's online database, and it was not clear whether he had an attorney yet who could comment on the allegations.
The arrest came after Monday's snowball fight, which appeared to be organized by social media content producers, caused a chaotic scene as a large crowd amassed at the popular park to wing snowballs at each other during a winter storm.
Police said officers arrived at the park after a 911 call about a disorderly group there. A video shows two officers getting bombarded by snowballs as a rowdy crowd yells and films with their phones. The officers shoved at least two people to the ground as they paced a walkway in the park while getting hit from all directions by snowballs.
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.
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.
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.”
