A disturbance caused by a large crowd near the Towson Town Center mall in Baltimore County, Maryland led to the arrest of two college-aged men for disorderly conduct Wednesday.
The county’s police arrived at Allegheny Avenue near the mall at around 7:45 p.m. after reports of the commotion and were still there at 9 p.m., according to WBFF-TV.
The crowd gathered at a parking lot near Silks Sports Bar, about 0.3 miles from the mall. The bar told WBFF-TV that they decided to shut down for the night due to the crowd, which was spilling into the bar and which broke a door as people tried to enter.
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The bar told WBFF-TV that they “want to make clear that Silks had no planned event associated with this gathering. There was no DJ, live entertainment, drink specials, promotion, social media activity or other scheduled activity at Silks that would have reasonably contributed to the size of the crowd. As we began to notice a significant increase in our normal patron volume, we immediately contacted local authorities to make them aware of the situation.”
On Thursday, the Baltimore County Police Department told WJZ-TV in a statement that officers aimed to disperse the crowd and arrested the two men, neither of whom were named, for disorderly conduct at the scene. The police did not specify what the two were doing prior to their arrests or say whether the two are enrolled at nearby Towson University.
Local business leaders want officials to take action. Nancy Hafford, executive director of the Towson Chamber of Commerce, told WBAL-TV that “We don’t play games here in Towson. We don’t mess around. We need to have some kind of plan in place that would strongly discourage this.”
Correction: A previous version of this article misstated where the crowd disturbance took place.
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