On Boxing Day, i.e. December 26, about 1000 teenagers and another 1000 in their early 20s became involved in a 2-hour long massive chain reaction brawl at St Matthews Mall in Kentucky, forcing the entire mall and surrounding businesses to shut down.
Police Officer Dennis McDonald told NBC News:
“As they [police officers] were responding to those disturbances, others were breaking out. Disturbances started to feed on themselves. They [police officers] were just overwhelmed with a number of calls for service and reports of disorder. Businesses were in the process of closing their doors, steel grates, and you had juveniles that were not allowing businesses to close up – [they were] climbing on the grates. This was a riot. It was crazy. “
Police first began responding to reports of “disturbances” at 7 pm but the officers assigned to the mall could not cope with the load therefore 50 officers from five different agencies were called as a backup after a series of brawls escalated and began to interfere with the businesses in the mall, affecting the entire mall.
Although, the police advised the stores to close their doors, the 2000-strong unruly mob refused to leave causing more commotion. By the time it was 8 pm, the brawls became so contagious they quickly turned into a melee: people were hanging onto steel grates, unwilling to let shopkeepers shut their businesses.
“I’ve been a police officer 33 years, and I haven’t ever seen anything like this before. We always plan for worst-case scenario, but this exceeded that,” McDonald added.
Scared shoppers posted footage of the ugly scenes on Twitter:
Scariest moment ever and I just so happened to catch it video. ? pic.twitter.com/w2OfCUSTCj
— Kaylee (@beatrice_kaylee) December 27, 2015
502 snappin at st. Matthews tonight…. Tragic pic.twitter.com/pk73ZZfIQB
— Loso Fueggo (@Comlanvii) December 27, 2015
This video was shot inside @MallStMatthews as a local teen was shopping/looking for post Christmas deals @WDRBNews pic.twitter.com/hwZJeti1rf
— Toni Konz (@tkonz) December 27, 2015
The mayhem spilled into the mall parking lot and prompted some other nearby businesses and restaurants to close. “We think they were communicating using social media. They would disperse and then all of a sudden there would be another group congregating at another location,” McDonald said.
No arrests were made as police said they focused on dispersing the crowd and restoring order to the shopping centre. Minor injuries were reported, none among officers, but there have been no arrests yet. Police haven’t determined what sparked the outbreak of violence, but they don’t believe it was planned. The mall reopened at 11 am the next day.
#Parenting #EpicFail, Police need to review video and slam all the punks: Over 1,000 Teens Shut Down #Kentucky Mall https://t.co/IjdJKqyIog
— Army Chief P (@ChiefPoints) December 27, 2015
Between 1,000-2,000 “unruly youths” shut down a Kentucky mall. From social media, appears they were black. Now @SpikeLee, is that “racist”?
— Larry Elder (@larryelder) December 28, 2015
The #Kentucky mall riot is seen simply a “brawl” with teens. Just imagine if they were primarily black teens in Baltimore.
— Jason Chesnut (@crazypastor) December 28, 2015
This Article (2,000 Unruly People Aged 13 To Early 20s Shut Down Kentucky’s Largest Mall) is free and open source. You have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with attribution to the author and AnonHQ.com.
Why won’t somebody say whether the rioters we’re black or white? Of course we know that if they were white it would have been stated. So we know they were black! We also know because nobody is complaining that their poor little innocent black kid was shot by a “violent” policeman
Did this make it to main stream press? Never heard about it. Sounds like a social media flash attack.
these are Montel’s heros, not like those awful terrorists who deserve to be drone striked in Oregon.