• Germany edition
Society
Photo: DPA

Hundreds of Facebook users crash teen's birthday party

Published: 4 Jun 11 10:06 CET | Print version
Online: http://www.thelocal.de/society/20110604-35453.html

Some 1,500 people showed up outside the house of a Hamburg girl celebrating her 16th birthday on Friday, after she posted an invite on social networking site Facebook but mistakenly listed the party as a public event.

"Unfortunately, she forgot to mark the celebration as private," police spokesman Mirko Streiber told news agency DPA.

The girl, named as Thessa, cancelled the party after 15,000 people RSVP'd to her "sweet sixteen" birthday bash via Facebook.

Police broke up the party at 1:55 am on Saturday morning. More than 100 officers were at the scene. Six revelers were arrested on suspicion of aggravated battery and property damage, but they have since been released.

Thessa opted to celebrate her birthday elsewhere.

Police said some people were injured after they stepped on pieces of broken glass. "Multiple units" were stationed outside the family's house, a spokesman said, and several streets were closed off. The family also hired a private security company.

As the evening wore on, there were isolated incidents of bottles and firecrackers being thrown toward the police.

"There were stones, bottles and fireworks flying, and party guests took apart (people's) front gardens," Streiber said. "Fences were trampled."

Some revelers opted to enjoy the celebrations from garage rooftops on the street.

"If you are not all that familiar with Facebook, in the future you should look closely at the user conditions before you send out invites," Streiber said.

DPA/DAPD/arp

What do you think? Leave your comment below.


Your comments about this article:

10:43 June 4, 2011 by iseedaftpeople
that's a pretty sizeable crowd for a birthday party... but I got that beat... I celebrated my birthday once with 65,000 people...

well ok, I should probably add that that was at the Rock am Ring open-air festival... and apart from my friends who were there with me, I guess nobody was really aware that it was my birthday...

What am I rambling about here anyway... well, I guess that was a birthday that young Thessa will never forget...
12:24 June 4, 2011 by MunchingInMuenchen
Sounds like iseedaftpeople spends a lot of time looking in the mirror...
12:34 June 4, 2011 by marimay
Perhaps if there were something else for people to do...
16:09 June 4, 2011 by Bruno53
I got nothing in Facebook about me. Love my private life. Anyway, how idiotic we can get?
20:41 June 4, 2011 by len0117
the real question is why was the birthday girl foolish enough to post her address on facebook? what's to stop a lunatic from showing up at her door and harming her?

use common sense people, if you're capable of it.
00:32 June 5, 2011 by iammucow
I'm more curious about how this happened at all. I can't imagine posting a public event on Facebook and having 15,000 people even look at it, much less RSVP. If it's that easy though, it seems like it would be great prank. Post a party on Facebook and then put down someone else's house as the address.
12:00 June 11, 2011 by Cheeseburger
@iammucow This isn't a matter of 15,000 random, unknown people looking at her profile and all just happening to see the event and wanting to come. This is intentional and organized. Not by the girl—she was the victim—but by people who are influential in organizing large meetups that overwhelm their venue, just for fun. It happens more than you think. In the States, something like this was done to a McDonald's, though McDonald's wasn't throwing any kind of a special event or didn't have a sale of some sort. It was just an ordinary day of operation when people started pouring in by the hundreds at a specified time and all tried getting into the restaurant. The intention is obvious: It's funny, it's naughty and it's legal if no one is caught as being the "event organizer".
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