Graduation Brawl Breaks Out At Arlington High School In Tennessee, Woman Involved In Fight Responds [Video]

Fists were flying during a graduation brawl at Arlington High School in Tennessee on Tuesday evening. Two women got into a fight over the saving of seats as seniors from the Arlington Community Schools walked into the Bellevue Baptist Church to accept their diplomas.

The video of the Arlington High School graduation brawl has now gone viral. The Tennessee school is located in a Memphis suburb. No students were involved in the fight, which required police officers to come into the church sanctuary.

“We didn’t do anything but sit in seats they said weren’t ours,” one woman is heard saying in a video clip from the graduation brawl at Arlington High School shared by WMCA Action News 5.

News Channel 3 reporters went to the home of Amanda Murphy, the woman reportedly shown handcuffed at the graduation fight to get her side of the story.

“F**k all y’all,” along with being flipped the middle finger, is how the journalists said they were greeted upon arrival to the Murphy home.

“The old man attacked my 13-year-old niece. They didn’t get that on camera,” Amanda Murphy told the reporters.

When asked to share those details with them, Murphy reportedly declined the opportunity offered by the reporters because she said “none of them people” mattered to her. Facebook posts by Amanda Murphy after the graduation brawl involved more F-bomb dropping and a notice that she was not sorry and had no regrets about the incident.

During the conversation between the local reporters and Murphy, a young woman’s voice coming from inside the house suddenly shouts, “Y’all embarrassed me in front of the whole class. You don’t even care that I graduated. No you don’t. No you don’t!”

As the traditional graduation song, “Pomp and Circumstance” is heard playing in the background while the 2017 seniors file into the Bellevue Baptist Church, the smiling crowd suddenly turns to look away from the excited Arlington High School students.

The graduation brawl began with two women cursing, pushing, shoving, and then ultimately throwing punches at one another. Several men on either side of the women attempted to step in and stop the fight. Viral videos from the Tennessee graduation ceremony also show the women wildly throwing haymakers and pulling each other’s hair.

Memphis area police officers ultimately got the brawling women out of the Baptist church sanctuary and out into the foyer of the building. One woman, believed to be a still highly agitated Amanda Murphy, is shown handcuffed and moving about on the lobby floor. It remains unclear if either of the women involved in the graduation brawl was arrested.

One woman launched into a verbal tirade directed at a man believed to be an off-duty police officer or church security staffer. While advocating on her friend’s behalf, she pointedly reminds the man he is not in uniform nor did he show the handcuffed woman a badge.

“Look, lady. I’m going to give you fair warning, OK?” the man is heard saying to the vocal friend of one of the women involved in the graduation brawl. “I’m going to show you my credentials. This is all I’m required to do.”

After producing his badge, the man points his finger at the woman and says, “You’ve been advised by law enforcement to shut up!”

The woman appears to still be unsatisfied with the way her friend is being treated. “I’m not leaving her in custody. Y’all might do anything to her.”

The Shelby County Sheriff’s Office was not called in to deal with the Arlington High School graduation fight because a security detail of six deputies was hired to work the event, MSN reports. School officials contracted security for the graduation ceremony through the Bellevue Baptist Church as a precaution.

Octavius Adams was sitting in the audience right behind the fight that broke out at the graduation ceremony. He went to watch his cousin received a diploma and was quite surprised to find himself grabbing his cellphone to record a massive brawl between parents.

“I was like no home training. I’ve always wanted to use that towards an adult, but no home training what so ever. And I was just sitting there like wow,” Adams told local reporters. “[In] a different part of town, if this was anywhere else, the police would’ve been there and there would’ve been a bit more force.”

A total of 500 Tennessee students were graduating from Arlington High School, according to Tammy Mason, the district superintendent. She deemed it “unfortunate” that a handful of adults attending the graduation ceremony engaged in such inappropriate behavior. The school official said the graduation brawl caused a distraction during what should have been a celebration of the accomplishment of the students. The 2017 senior class earned more than $30,600,000 in college scholarship money, Mason also proudly noted.

“The graduation ceremony was not affected by this incident due to the actions of Bellevue’s security team who promptly removed the adults from the ceremony,” Arlington Community Schools Superintendent Mason also said in a prepared statement. “It is our hope that the focus will shift to our students and their accomplishments instead of the poor decisions by adults in attendance.”

What do you think about the graduation brawl at Arlington High School in Tennessee?

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