MUSKEGON, Mich. — A lunchroom brawl at Muskegon High School Tuesday morning involving around 100 students ended with pepper spray from police and 10 of those teenagers being taken into custody.
Muskegon Superintendent Jon Felske got a call about the fight around 11:20 Tuesday morning.
“During our first hour lunch – which is mostly freshmen with some sophomores,” he says, “a group of young ladies had started fighting. Some other young men jumped in.”
Things escalated quickly, according to sophomore Tyler Hooker and her friends. They were in the cafeteria and watched the whole scene unfold.
“There’s a lot of kids in first lunch, but fighting was probably about 70 or 80 kids,” Hooker says. “I couldn’t believe it after the first fight, then the next fight and the next fight.”
“There was just a whole bunch of people fighting,” sophomore Diashja Patterson adds. “I’m eating my food and next thing you know, I hear yelling girls, cussing out each other and they just started fighting. And boys started fighting. Everybody. It was just crazy.”
The school’s liaison officer responded and called in back-up.
Hooker and Diashja’s sister Tiashja were just two of several students hit with pepper spray by police.
“My friends was fittin’ to fight and I was trying to grab her to keep her from fighting,” Tiashja says, “but then she fought anyways and I’m trying to break it up.”
“Then the police came and maced me and I was just standing right there. It was crazy.”
“The police department used some pepper spray to obviously try and break up the fighting people,” Felske says. “We had some students were not involved that obviously though received some of that.”
One student has been arrested. Nine others were detained.
Felske and police are reviewing the school’s surveillance video to determine exact involvement and severity of student actions. School punishments and civil charges will follow the investigation.
