(Reuters) -Thousands of people overran New York’s Union Square and the surrounding streets on Friday after a popular live streamer announced a “giveaway” event that grew chaotic, leading police officers to move in to disperse the crowd.
The event was sponsored by live streamer Kai Cenat, best known for his live streams on the gaming site Twitch and his YouTube videos. He had earlier promoted a “huge giveaway” on his Instagram account for 4 p.m. ET (2000 GMT).
Before the event could take place, footage from news choppers showed some of the crowd flinging bottles and traffic cones, climbing onto the roof of a subway entrance, tearing down construction barriers, standing on top of cars and unloading a fire extinguisher.
Hundreds of police officers responded, though they were not wearing riot gear. Video showed police setting up barricades around the square.
It was not immediately clear what had sparked the chaos.
A spokesperson for the city police department said no injuries had been reported as of 4:45 p.m. and that there was not yet information on the number of arrests.
In a social media advisory, the department urged people to avoid the park, which is near New York University.
(Reporting by Kanishka Singh in Washington)
