Police Department

Large Downtown Fight

Sgt. Terry Preuninger, PIO

Monday, July 22, 2019 at 10:10 a.m.

Large fight downtown sends multiple people to the hospital, consumes most the police departments resources working on the night shift.

Friday night at 0118 hours officers responded to a call of a fight involving 8 people outside of the bars in the 400 block of W. Sprague. Prior to LE arrival the call updated to a stabbing and a shooting.

(The reports of the shooting were later determined to be erroneous).

When LE arrived it took over 17 officers to contain the scene, detain, contact and interview witnesses and suspects, preserve evidence, contact victims at the hospital and attempt to contain the crowd. Two unrelated additional fights broke out in the crowd while the investigation was ongoing. People were arrested from those incidents and a gun was taken from a male involved in one of those fights.

From the original call two men were transported to the hospital, both with non-life threatening injuries. One form two stab wounds and one from a large head wound (two to four inches in diameter) sustained when he was struck with a street sign, and a five inch spike from a hair pick was stuck in his calf (when he was stabbed with the hair pick.) A female who had been involved self-transported to the hospital with facial injuries.

The incident evolved when a male and female tried to break up a fight between two women unknown to them out in the street. The violence quickly expanded. Between 5 and 10 males attacked the lone male who had originally intervened in the female fight. As the group of males followed him into the street and surrounded him he produced a knife and stabbed one of the attackers. Eventually he was disarmed, hit with a street sign, and knocked to the ground and struck multiple times.

Numerous people who sustained injuries during the incident did not want to pursue charges or fled prior to police arrival.

One suspect was arrested for an unrelated felony warrant. The investigation is ongoing.

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