Three teens wounded after gunfire erupts during spring break party at Dockweiler Beach
Three teenagers were wounded in a shooting at Dockweiler Beach on Friday night that occurred during a spring break party promoted on TikTok that drew hundreds of revelers to the shore, authorities said.
Officers responded to the 11400 block of Vista Del Mar in Playa del Rey after a report of a large crowd and gunshots around 8 p.m., said Officer J. Chavez of the Los Angeles Police Department. When authorities arrived, they determined two men had fired multiple shots with a handgun that wounded two teen girls and a teen boy, Chavez said.
The teens were taken to a hospital and were stable, Chavez said. Police did not provide the ages of the teenagers nor did they confirm whether the teens were attending the beach party.
The gathering, dubbed the Springbreak Takeover, was promoted on TikTok beginning in late March and was set to begin at Tower 56 at Dockweiler Beach about 4 p.m. Friday. The flier for the event tells attendees to "keep the BS at home." A video posted on TikTok purportedly from the event shows crowds of teenagers converging on a grassy area near the beach with lights from police cars flashing in the distance.
The number of attendees is not clear, but authorities suspect there were more than 1,000 people on the beach.
Officers from multiple law enforcement agencies showed up to try to disperse the crowd. When the group left the beach, they began to flood onto the streets of El Segundo, said El Segundo Police Sgt. Russel Patton.
"This caused a whole bunch of disturbances on our streets and we had to do a lot of keeping the peace and request mutual aid to keep them from disrupting our folks," he said.
About 100 people packed into a 7-Eleven store on Imperial Highway and stole candy and other snacks, according to police and the store manager, who declined to provide his name to The Times. A group also allegedly assaulted an employee at a doughnut shop in the city, but the worker did not want authorities to pursue a case, Patton said.
Police did not make any arrests.
"We took a couple of crime reports and tried to keep the peace as best we could," Patton said.
This isn't the first time a viral TikTok event has prompted a large police response in Southern California.
In May 2021, nearly 150 people were arrested in Huntington Beach after a man’s TikTok video inviting people to his birthday party went viral and the city was overrun with unruly revelers.
This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
