54 Spring Breakers Arrested at Tybee Island’s Orange Crush Amid Brawls, Stolen Guns, and a Trashed Beach
Tybee Island’s unpermitted Orange Crush weekend has always sold itself as a reunion. Over April 19–21, 2024, it looked more like a riot with a beach attached. Georgia agencies logged 54 arrests, 111 traffic citations, five beach citations, and 526 calls for service. Officers recovered a stolen vehicle and three stolen guns while they were clearing the sand. Georgia State Patrol ended a vehicle chase on the island with a PIT maneuver. Videos that circulated that weekend showed fistfights on the boardwalk while people filmed instead of stepping in.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution later published the island’s own numbers. City officials still tried to call it a win. The crowd was estimated at roughly half of 2023. More than a hundred extra officers from the Georgia State Patrol, the Chatham County Sheriff’s Office, and other agencies were on the sand. Arrests were down relative to the size of the mob. The trash was not. Cleanup crews filled more than ten ATV carts with bottles, cups, and whatever else the weekend left behind.
An HBCU Party the University Walked Away From
Orange Crush started in 1988 as a gathering by and for Savannah State University students. After arrests and violence, the school cut official ties in 1991. The tradition kept going by word of mouth and became one of the country’s best-known HBCU spring-break events. Savannah State students still showed up in 2024 — this time to pick up other people’s garbage. WJCL documented the volunteer crews on Monday.
Mayor Brian West thanked volunteers and said most people who came were just there to have a weekend. Mayor Van Johnson in Savannah, a Savannah State alumnus who has embraced the nickname “OC OG,” closed downtown streets and called the city’s own crowd-control plan a success. The pictures from Tybee told a different story.
From Unpermitted Brawl to a Permitted One-Day Festival
The 54 arrests became a turning point. In 2025 the island issued an official permit for the first time and the gathering was rebranded Crush Reloaded, a single permitted festival day instead of a three-day free-for-all. Arrests that year fell to 22. The same coastal party culture showed up a week later in Florida, where The AEGIS Alliance covered teens dumping garbage into the ocean leaving Boca Bash and catching felony pollution charges on video.
For more on how American beach towns absorb this kind of weekend, see The AEGIS Alliance’s US News and Crime News desks.
