Florida State University students poured out of residence halls Tuesday afternoon, gazing upwards as fat white flakes of snow began falling on the Tallahassee campus.
As soon as there was a dusting of white on the ground, they began posting photos and videos online of makeshift sleds and miniature snowmen.
Giddy shrieks filled the air as students scraped what icy slush they could find into snowballs to hurl at one another.
But by Tuesday night, a confrontation between students and Tallahassee police ended with an officer firing pepper balls into the crowd.
Students gathered in the city’s College Town neighborhood began pelting passing cars with balls of ice. One vehicle occupant reported being hit in the head while entering their car, according to a police report.
When police arrived to disperse the crowd, students soon began pelting them with “ice projectiles,” according to the report, striking at least one officer in the face.
“In response, the officers retrieved their pepper ball systems from their vehicles and issued additional warnings,” Tallahassee Police spokesperson Damon Miller, Jr. said. “When the crowd continued to be non-compliant, the officer fired pepper balls in a strategic manner to encourage the dispersal of the disorderly crowd.”
No students were struck by the pepper balls, he said.
Pepper balls are approved for use in “unruly crowd management situations in order to control crowd movement, defend an area or to disperse persons in defiance of lawful orders or committing criminal offenses,” according to Tallahassee Police Department protocols.
One individual was arrested for battery on a law enforcement officer, Miller said. No charges had been filed with Leon County Courts as of Thursday.
“The Tallahassee Police Department reminds the public that while winter storms can be exciting, throwing hard ‘ice balls’ can be dangerous due to the hard impact when thrown and can be illegal,” he said.
FSU senior Sohpia Hernandez, 21, was lured to College Town by the promise of spiked hot chocolate at her favorite bar and quickly joined in the snowball fight while waiting to get in.
“It was just silly fun. The cops were walking around shouting, but people aren’t going to stop because a snowball is harmless,” she said.
She didn’t realize the police had fired pepper balls into the crowd until she and her friends started coughing.
“At that point it probably created more aggression and people started throwing more snowballs,” she said. “They could have shut down the street if they were worried about cars. If you see a problem, don’t create another problem.”
Police left after making the arrest, she said, at which point students resumed lobbing snowballs across the street.
“It wasn’t until 2 a.m. when the bars closed that it died down,” she said. “After that, they just went somewhere else to find more snow.”