Four teenagers have been arrested on assault charges in flash mob attacks around Temple University in which college students were beaten, a university officer was knocked down and a police horse was punched in the face, police said on Monday.
Police said the attacks were carried out on Friday last week by bands of as many as 100 boys and girls.
Temple spokesman Ray Betzner told TV station NBC10 that roving juveniles played a “cat-and-mouse game” with police.
In two separate attacks, police said students and others were surrounded and then punched, kicked, robbed and in some cases knocked to the ground by groups of 20 to 30 teens.
Arrests have been made in only one of the cases.
In two other incidents that have led to arrests, police said a boy punched a police horse twice in the face as mounted officers were trying to break up a crowd at a street corner, and another threw a university officer to the ground.
University campus safety director Charles Leone told TV station WPVI that it appears victims were picked at random and that students were not targeted.
“It’s very concerning that you can get a group of juveniles to pull together that quickly and some become violent,” he added.
He said the university and city police would be stepping up patrols through the rest of the semester, especially because next weekend is Halloween.
About 34,000 full-time students attend the university.
The violence broke out after about 200 juveniles, apparently responding to social media posts, converged outside an off-campus movie theater, university police said in a report to the university community.
For the next few hours, the juveniles split into smaller groups, some of which assaulted people they encountered as they ran from police, they said.
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