World

Philadelphia Snowball Fight Turns Ugly: Violent Macy's Flash Mob

by amyellensoden | February 17, 2010 at 05:07 pm

1309 views | 4 Recommendations | 4 comments

A snowball right turned ugly in Philadelphia when over 100 teenagers rampaged through a local Macy's store after starting a snowball fight. The mass snowball fight took place on Tuesday when a bunch of teens gathered to form a flash mob that turned violent.

The teens started brawling, and soon the fight ended up inside a local Macy's where items were damaged and stolen. The snowball fight flash mob was reportedly orchestrated through text messages and social media websites such as Facebook and Twitter.

Two members of Philadelphia's city council are considering legal action against Facebook, Twitter, and MySpace in the wake of a "flash mob" earlier this week that turned violent, according to a letter sent to the city's mayor and obtained by CNET.

Permission to look into the possibility of a lawsuit against these social media platforms has been asked of Mayor Michael Nutter by two members of the Philadelphia city council. They believe that platforms such as MySpace and Facebook don't do enough to monitor content shared on their sites that can lead to such violent outbreaks.

There have been no charges made yet against the teenagers involved in this flash mob. Around 150 teens lead a rampage through the Market East Mall's Macy's department store. 16 arrests were made following the mass snowball fight, but no injuries were sustained by anyone involved.

3 See all footage | View Slideshow

Share: email story | add to any | | facebook | stumbleupon

recommend Sign In or Join to post comments

stejeb

at 22:56 on February 17th, 2010

Calling for lawsuits on social websites is pretty stupid really, what will they want to prosecute after that? People use mobile phones and phones for the same thing, they aren't mnitored either, or do we all get our phones tapped and texts spyed on?

jcmclaug (not verified)

at 17:46 on February 18th, 2010

"...MySpace and Facebook don't do enough to monitor content shared on their sites..." Really? I

caj1

at 21:46 on February 18th, 2010

Just so everybody knows, the Market East Mall in Center City Philadelphia seems to always have unruly teenagers around it. The presence of cell phones has probably made this problem worse.

jaydee (not verified)

at 09:51 on February 23rd, 2010

Suing a social media website is not the solution. Bring back Rizzo style police tactics and see how quickly these savages disappear. These vermin are affecting the center city area economically and businesses should organize and take any actions necessary to stop these feral thugs. Having made the mistake of taking the train after school I saw the most savage and barbaric behavior imaginable and it is the same type oe people who are causing these problems.