The online influencer Kai Cenat will face multiple charges, including inciting a riot, after thousands of people overran a park and its surrounding area in New York City in response to a giveaway of PlayStation 5 consoles, police said.
A post to Twitch streamer Cenat’s Instagram story announced a giveaway at Union Square Park on Friday at 4 p.m. By 1:30 p.m. about 300 people had gathered, Jeffrey Maddrey, the New York Police Department’s highest-ranking uniformed officer, said at a news conference Friday — “something we would expect for a social media event like this.” But by 3 p.m., news of the giveaway had spread widely online, and thousands of people began arriving in Union Square, he added.
“I personally saw other people leaving here with their heads split open, you know, cuts, bruises, lacerations,” he said, adding that he also had been hit on the head. But he said reports that a 17-year-old had been shot had turned out to be false.Maddrey said the incident showed the “power of social media, the danger of social media. We went from 300 kids to a couple of thousand kids in minutes. We have to be responsible when we use this tool.
“They’re throwing tear gas out there,” Cenat said in a Twitch stream while the chaos was unfolding. “We’re not going to do nothing until it’s safe. … Everybody for themselves, because it’s a war out there, man.”
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