Police Use Tear Gas to Shut Down CSUN Party

Gunfire erupted amid 200 party-goers who spilled out into a Cal State Northridge dormitory parking lot after police with tear gas shut down a weekend dance, authorities said.

The violence came early Saturday after a widely publicized dance sponsored by the Phi Beta Sigma fraternity grew too large to control, authorities said. Campus police requested help from the Los Angeles Police Department to break up the dance, which drew about 600 people, some of them from off campus.

The dance was the first large social event held in the University Student Union since last February, when campus authorities, backed up by Los Angeles police, shut down a party attended by more than 1,000 people. School officials had suspended such functions until a new policy to increase security could be established.

Although no one was injured Saturday, officials will meet this week to re-examine the policy.

“Frankly, we’re going to review how we deal with the situation or if it’s even possible in this day and age to hold this type of event,” said Fred Strache, Cal State Northridge associate vice president for student programs.

Several shots were fired about 1:45 a.m. Saturday, campus police said. Minutes later, more shots were fired in the same area outside two dorms, Southernwood and Burdock halls.

Campus police arrested Ferris T. Valentine, 23, of Pasadena in the first shooting as he drove away from the area, said campus Police Chief Stanley D. Friedman. A videotape made by a campus police dispatcher shows a man believed to be Valentine firing a gun, Friedman said. Valentine is not a Cal State Northridge student.

The man in the videotape pulled out a 9-millimeter semiautomatic pistol after a quarrel with two men who narrowly missed being hit by the man’s car as he backed out of the lot.