FARMVILLE – There was no Sabbath, day-of-rest touch to Sunday night for Farmville police and other emergency responders in the town.

A sudden snowstorm sent cars into ditches.

There was a head-on crash on East Third Street.

A police officer was struck by a vehicle.

And a house was on fire on Fifth Avenue.

“So, it was busy,” Farmville Police Chief Doug Mooney told The Herald.

The crowd was not too eager to disperse or listen to the officers' request to leave the street, according to Chief Mooney.

“What they wanted to do is take over the street and sled ride down it, which isn't safe, it isn't practical. It's fun but two years ago somebody got hit by a car doing that. We can't allow that for safety reasons,” the police chief said.

And then there were the snowmen and, apparently, snowwomen.

“In the midst of this there was also-they made snowmen with various anatomical parts on it,” said Chief Mooney, “that you wouldn't want children to see, obviously.

“The problem is setting the sofa on fire, it's illegal. You can't burn stuff in the middle of the road,” he said.

Meanwhile, there was the house fire on Fifth Avenue.

“They had two fire companies. Rice was assisting Farmville with the fire. These people's house was on fire and they had to try to pull some (firefighters) from that to come over” to Buffalo Street.

And in trying to respond to the sofa on fire, the ladder truck got stuck.

“It ended up in a ditch, trying to get turned around. It was trying to get to (Buffalo Street),” Chief Mooney said. “So then it took two tow trucks. One of them had to be one of the huge ones that we don't even have in the area. They're expensive. The fire truck finally came and of course (the crowd on Buffalo Street) were all cheering the fire truck and some of them were making comments, Well, now the road's lit up and now they can slide down the street better.”

Or not.

“It's just totally unacceptable, plus it's very expensive,” the police chief said. “When you talk about pulling apparatus from a working fire over to (Buffalo Street) and the cost of towing a truck out of ditch, you're looking at thousands of dollars, easy. On top of that we had police calls that were starting to stack up and it's just a drain on the resources. It's illegal. It's a significant public safety strain, I think, to the Town of Farmville.

“It was a crowd,” he continued. “It was a crowd of unruly people.

“The pictures I've seen there were quite a few Longwood University sweatshirts and shirts and stuff. The majority were college students,” Chief Mooney said.

Chief Mooney said that “charges are pending” in connection with the Buffalo Street sofa fire incident.

“I think there are better ways you can have fun,” the police chief said.

The sofa fire was put out and the sofa was put to the side of the road.

“We know what house it came from,” Chief Mooney said.

But the sofa didn't remain at the side of Buffalo Street.

The next morning found it “thrown in the fountain at Longwood University,” Chief Mooney said.

“I don't understand. And it's not the first time a sofa's been set on fire on the road. Before I got here (over two years ago) someone set one on fire up on Buffalo Street,” he said.

On that night the Town had blocked off the street for sleigh riding but things got out of hand, according to the police chief.

As a result of that experience, the Town stopped blocking off streets for sledding. Chief Mooney believes that decision is a very good one because sleds don't always stop at the bottom of a hill where they are supposed to.

“It's tough to block off a street for sleigh riding because at the bottom they could keep on going and you never know…it's just too dangerous to allow,” Chief Mooney said.

“We never looked at making charges on the person who set the sofa on fire (that first time). Probably we should have,” Chief Mooney said, “because we might not have had this (Sunday night). It's got to be stopped at some point. I think when you have confrontations like this it's not good for students and it's not good for the officers because emotions are strained, at best, on both sides. It's not really the interaction I'd like to see.”

And he summed up in a single word.

“Disappointing.”

But he is optimistic and regards the college student population favorably.

“I think things are getting better. I think a lot of students are trying. And one thing I'd like to point out, I mean it's 5,000 students at Longwood and it was only about 200 up there (on Buffalo Street on Sunday night) and not even all the 200 were even doing things that were problems. They were just there,” Chief Mooney said. “So we're looking at a very small percentage who caused a very large problem.

“I think that's pretty safe to say,” he said.

Longwood University Police Chief Robert Beach sees eye to eye with Chief Mooney.

“I'm sorry it happened. I'm disturbed by the fact that it did happen,” he told The Herald on Wednesday.

And LU's police chief believes many Longwood students feel the same way, including participants in Sunday night's incident.

“They were appalled also," he said, describing the reaction of students he had just spoken to.

“There are a lot of ways to have fun in the snow,” Chief Beach said.

But a “small minority of students,” he said, “lose respect…They just don't think.”

Some of those who were in the crowd of 200 people on Buffalo Street on Sunday night, Chief Beach said, “are embarrassed by their participation in it…

LU's police chief hopes a lesson has been learned.

“I think the message has been sent,” he said.

A message was certainly delivered by Longwood University's Vice President For Student Affairs, Tim Pierson, on Wednesday.

“Longwood University expects its students to abide by and be respectful of campus and community policies and laws. We were extremely disappointed to receive reports of disruptive behavior in the community on Sunday evening during the season's first snowfall,” Pierson said in as press statement, adding that, “students cited in the reports can expect to face judicial action where appropriate.”

There were three Farmville police officers responding to the Buffalo Street incident, out of a department that was stretched on Sunday night to begin with. (The officer struck by a vehicle was not seriously injured but knocked out of commission for several days).

“We had other calls. We were spread thin. The three of the them were up there for an extended period of time…That's a significant amount of our resources were up there when we had people that were calling for whatever assistance,” Chief Mooney said.

There are, he believes, better uses of police resources and time. Ditto for the Fire Department and its ladder truck.

“There is no other ladder truck in this whole region so if we had something, heaven forbid, at the high-rises (Longwood University dorms) and our ladder truck is stuck in a ditch,” he said, declining to complete the thought of what a fire at a high-rise dorm full of students might produce without a ladder truck to fight its flames.

“It's tough, I think, at the time you're having fun to realize how the domino effect can take over and it can cause a lot of problems. Thank goodness they were able to put out the house fire and keep the damages down,” Chief Mooney said of Sunday night's Fifth Avenue fire. “But if we'd had a second house fire…something like that can really stack up and make it worse and worse. It was other places we all could have been.”

Chief Mooney, along with Chief Beach, spoke to Longwood's SGA council on Tuesday and he believes the students will help by policing themselves.

“I recognize they're the student leaders and that's where you start to get things out there,” he said of his 'Listen guys, this isn't what we're supposed to be doing' message regarding the police department.

“And they'll do that,” he said of the student government leaders. “I have faith that they will. Again, it was a small percentage of (students) that got started and got out of hand but even then it was a very small percentage of students that were wreaking havoc.

“And I think we can work from here and keep that from happening again. I feel confident. I think they're bright young people. They can figure out,” Farmville's police chief said, “that this was not a good use of anybody's time.”