It was the longest game in the history of the World Series. Monday night, millions of Philadelphia sports fans watched what promised to be their first championship in any major sport in 25 years. Unfortunately, due to heavy rain, game 5 of the 2008 World Series was postponed two days to Wednesday night.
The instant Brad Lidge struck out Eric Hinske to win the game, the students of the West Chester University of Pennsylvania came pouring out of their houses by the numbers, all meeting in one location, the corner of South Walnut and East Nields.
At first it was all in good fun. Over 1,000 students gathered in the middle of the street chanting, "Let's Go Phillies!" and singing, "We Are the Champions." Then the police arrived on scene. Seeing this, a couple of kids decided that it would be "fun" to bring down a street light. After about five minutes of shaking the pole they succeeded. The cops started moving in on the crowd, but with no effect. Then it got really ugly.
The riot wasn't about to go anywhere. A couple of students yelled, "Flip a car!" Soon after, one of the cars started swaying back and forth, and before long it was upside down on the sidewalk. The police looked at each other as if they were saying, "What do we do know?" They couldn't do anything. They were out numbered 1000 to 6. All they could really do was leave.
They indeed left, but that only made a bad situation worse. Another car flipped. By this point there were groups of 15 people on top of each car, acting as if they were rock stars on stage looking down to their audience singing, chanting, and of course getting their pictures taken.
At this point it was another fifteen minutes before the police came, this time in full force. Sirens were going off as nine police cars and over eighteen cops arrived back at the scene. Wearing riot gear, the police swept their way into the mob. This proved effective, as it was now one o'clock in the morning and people were getting ready to go back home anyway.
The instant Brad Lidge struck out Eric Hinske to win the game, the students of the West Chester University of Pennsylvania came pouring out of their houses by the numbers, all meeting in one location, the corner of South Walnut and East Nields.
At first it was all in good fun. Over 1,000 students gathered in the middle of the street chanting, "Let's Go Phillies!" and singing, "We Are the Champions." Then the police arrived on scene. Seeing this, a couple of kids decided that it would be "fun" to bring down a street light. After about five minutes of shaking the pole they succeeded. The cops started moving in on the crowd, but with no effect. Then it got really ugly.
The riot wasn't about to go anywhere. A couple of students yelled, "Flip a car!" Soon after, one of the cars started swaying back and forth, and before long it was upside down on the sidewalk. The police looked at each other as if they were saying, "What do we do know?" They couldn't do anything. They were out numbered 1000 to 6. All they could really do was leave.
They indeed left, but that only made a bad situation worse. Another car flipped. By this point there were groups of 15 people on top of each car, acting as if they were rock stars on stage looking down to their audience singing, chanting, and of course getting their pictures taken.
At this point it was another fifteen minutes before the police came, this time in full force. Sirens were going off as nine police cars and over eighteen cops arrived back at the scene. Wearing riot gear, the police swept their way into the mob. This proved effective, as it was now one o'clock in the morning and people were getting ready to go back home anyway.
Comments
Lancaster, PA, I am sorry that your family dear friend was hurt.
And they had to offer apologies and retractions.
Also, I wanted to note that before I got the correct time, several major papers had reported the wrong time for the candidate's appearance, so even they make mistakes.
I found your piece to be interesting and it isn't always possible to know exactly what happened right away. Today, while covering election news, I had to change the time for a candidate's arrival in our state due to breaking news about a time change. It was just a lucky break that I got the correct info into the article before deadline. Things like that can happen with developing news stories.
Lancaster, PA
(Guest)
(Guest)
10/31/2008
Actually, someone was hurt, very badly. My family's dear friend, who is a WC student was flown to Temple with a fractured skull. Serious injury! It was not all fun.
wc resident
(Guest)
(Guest)
10/31/2008
it was the stuff. lots of fun. good times
I heard about that! It seems to always be something. I am also glad no one was hurt. People take things to seriously.
wc resident
(Guest)
(Guest)
10/30/2008
West Chester students are destructive ignorant assholes. This went way beyond celebrating.
WC Guy
(Guest)
(Guest)
10/30/2008
Unfortunately somebody was SERIOUSLY injured. "Not too much damage" is far from the truth. This little escapade cost thousands of dollars of damage and manpower!
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