Monroeville Mall Brawl: Mall Closes Early After ‘Multiple Fights’ Break Out, Several Injured

A Monroeville Mall brawl left several teens injured on Friday evening. According to the Canada Journal, the Monroeville Mall in Pennsylvania was closed early following “multiple fights” that broke out. Hundreds of teens showed up at the mall around 5 p.m., and the fights broke out around 8 p.m.. Mall employees said that the fights started on the first floor, and then the teens made their way up the escalators to the second floor, where they continued fighting.

At least two people were transported to a nearby hospital with non-life threatening injuries.
Chief K. Douglas Cole said that he didn’t believe that this was an organized protest of any kind. However, it’s unclear why the teens showed up at the mall around the same time or how/why the fights broke out. Police said that some information circulated on social media, and at least two calls to 911 were placed after the fights started.

The Monroeville Mall brawl caused minor damage to the mall, but there wasn’t anything significant reported. According to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, police made two arrests that night, and more citations are expected in the coming days.

“At least two were arrested for fighting from a domestic dispute earlier in the day. [Cole] said he expects a number of disorderly conduct citations to be issued as well, although he could not say how many.”

Several stores in the mall chose to lock down in order to keep the rowdy teens from entering. Some stores even locked down with customers inside, but gave them a choice whether to stay or leave before closing the doors to the store.

“Mall management agreed to close the mall early because the fighting was depleting police resources, Chief Cole said, but by the time everything had shut down, it was close to the normal 9 p.m. closing time. County police requested additional Port Authority buses run routes from the mall to assist in more quickly dispersing the crowd, the chief said.”

The Monroeville Mall brawl wasn’t the first mall fight of its kind. As previously reported by the Inquisitr, a mall fight involving over 100 teens broke out at the Lauderhill Mall in Florida back in June of 2013. The motive in that mall brawl was unclear, but police suspect that a disagreement between two girls may have sparked the all-out brawl. There was also some chatter about the fight being about the Trayvon Martin case, which caused some very heated discussions at that time.

[Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons]