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Two teens were attacked with pepper spray during a gathering of between 300 and 400 youth who converged on North Vancouver’s Waterfront Park Sunday night after word of a party spread on TikTok.
Police are investigating the pepper spray attack which happened when two 15-year-olds were targeted with the bear mace during an altercation among partygoers.
The large gathering at the North Vancouver park involved several hundred teens who responded to word of a party posted on TikTok.
When police crashed the party around 10 p.m., most of the youth dispersed, said Const. Mansoor Sahak, spokesman for the North Vancouver RCMP. Word of another large party was posted on TikTok for North Vancouver’s Princess Park, but police didn’t receive any reports stemming from that gathering, said Sahak.
The North Vancouver gathering happened days after another large event also posted on TikTok attracted between 600 and 700 teens to Ambleside Beach in West Vancouver on the night of Aug. 31.
Large numbers of West Vancouver police officers also attended the party to keep tabs on the crowd, said Const. Nicole Braithwaite, spokesperson for the West Vancouver Police. With the exception of a few unruly party-goers, for the most part the gathering was uneventful, she said.
It’s not the first time public posts on TikTok about beach parties have led to large gatherings on the North Shore.
Three or four similar video "invitations" have gone out in the past two months, said Sgt. Mark McLean of the West Vancouver Police.
Usually the grad "campouts" on the Labour Day long weekend, which in the past have included teens hiking up North Vancouver’s Baden Powell Trail to gather in the forest, or large get-togethers in local parks, don’t lead to problems, said McLean. But occasionally they do.
The grad "sleep out" parties on the Labour Day weekend are a North Shore tradition going back a number of years, although they are not condoned by the local school districts.
Similar events don’t seem to happen on this weekend to the same extent in other parts of the Lower Mainland, said police.
McLean said he grew up on the North Shore and there were no sleep-out events back then.
But for at least the past 14 years that he’s worked with the WVPD, “it’s been a thing,” he said.
West Vancouver Police responded to another report of a loud grad party in the 1,100 block of Millstream Road on Monday night, where about 100 teens had gathered in a local park in the British Properties, said Braithwaite.
That group of teens eventually dispersed.
