Pictured: The moment an American police detective pulls out a HANDGUN after he's hit with SNOWBALLS



This is the terrifying moment that an American police detective pulled out his handgun after he was targeted in a snowball fight.

Washington police are investigating the incident, when the off-duty officer drew his gun in the midst of the light-hearted battle.

About 200 people from a Washington D.C. neighbourhood had gathered to brave a snowstorm for a massive snowball fight.

'It was pretty fun,' one unidentified participant told reporters. 'But when the gun came out, it just changed the tone of the thing a little bit.'

The unnamed detective pulls out a handgun after his car was targeted during a mass snowball fight

The police officer's handgun is circle. He waved in front of chanting youngsters

The plainclothes officer became angry when his car - a maroon Hummer - was hit by snowballs.

He got out of the SUV and yelled at the crowd, before pulling out his gun and showing it to the crowd.

Eyewitness Matthew Bradley told Washington City Paper: 'We showed up to see a snowball fight already in progress. Two factions along 14th Street along the intersection.

'It was pretty friendly, mostly OK. At one point, there was one interaction with the police that I saw. A cop got stuck in the snow. People stopped and helped him out.

'A couple moments later, at the intersection, there was this big maroon Hummer. A small faction of people decided to target it with snowballs. They're throwing snowballs at the Hummer.

The plaincothes officer clutches the weapon in his left hand

The detective pulls a man out from the crowd and accuses him of hitting his car with snowballs

The snowball fight on 14th Street in Washington DC was organised via Facebook

'It turns out the driver of the Hummer is a detective. He gets out. He's waving a walkie talkie. It's not going well. Then he starts waving a gun.

'He hadn't identified himself at this point. There was a point where things cooled off a bit, more police showed up, and he identified himself at that point. The name was Detective Baylor.

'There was a point where it got really tense. The experience for many people was snowball fight kind of fun...and then there's a guy with a gun.'

Uniformed police arrived on the scene to investigate reports of a man waving a handgun. The detective only calmed down once his fellow police officers arrived. Later in the incident, the detective went into the crowd and grabbed a man who he thought threw a snowball at him.

Assistant Chief Pete Newsham said: 'We have to see what the entire circumstance was. But just a snowball fight, not in my mind, that doesn't seem a situation where we would pull out a service weapon.'