Police said that eight people were arrested on Friday morning after a brawl broke out following a kindergarten graduation ceremony in Cleveland, the Cleveland Plain Dealer reported. The fighting started between a pair of teenage girls who apparently just began hitting each other, supposedly over "spilled punch." Family members, of all joined into the "melee" at Michael R. White Elementary School in an urban area of Cleveland.
"You had adults fighting adults, juvies fighting juvies, and so forth," Cleveland police Commander Wayne Drummond said. "You just had a melee here."
No charges were immediately filed, but those arrested were being booked for aggravated a riot, Drummond said. Charges are only filed once prosecutors review the case.
Once the fighting began, one person even pulled out a pipe, and another a hammer, which led school security officers to call in the police, USA Today reported.
"It was a very chaotic scene," Drummond added.
No students enrolled at the elementary school were involved in the fight, school district communications officer Roseann Cenfora said via email to USA Today.
The school was soon put on lockdown.
Seven adults and one teenager were arrested for aggravated rioting and prosecutors will decide whether to charge them, he said. No one was seriously injured, but there were a number of scrapes and bruises from the fisticuffs.
"It's embarrassing that parents during a kindergarten promotion cannot control themselves, and what we tried to do was respond significantly," city councilman Jeff Johnson, who lives across the street from the school.
Any parent involved in the fight should be banned from the building, Johnson said. "We're not going to have people coming into our schools, being disrespectful, fighting. So I support them being hauled off."
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