Anaheim fight: Brawl breaks out at hotel involving up to 100 people
Two people were hospitalized and two were arrested after a brawl broke out at an Anaheim hotel that involved from 60 to 100 people, police say.
ANAHEIM, Calif. (KABC) -- Two people were hospitalized and two were arrested after a brawl broke out at an Anaheim hotel that involved from 60 to 100 people, police say.
The fight was so big -- involving big crowds in at least two separate parts of the hotel - that police had to call in extra help from gang units and the Orange County Sheriff's Department to help separate people.
Police were called to the Cambria hotel at Katella Avenue and Anaheim Boulevard around 12:40 p.m. Wednesday. When the first officers got there, they found a large group of about 40 people fighting with each other in the parking lot.
Then they spotted a second group inside the lobby of about 40 to 60 people also fighting. They called for more units to help break up the fights.
As officers tried separating the fighting parties they found two people with laceration wounds that were not life-threatening. They were transported to a local hospital.
Officers also took two people into custody, an adult and a juvenile, for fighting in public.
Officers then went room-to-room and floor-to-floor searching the hotel for more possible victims in need of medical assistance.
Police aren't sure exactly how many different groups of people were involved or what triggered the fight. One witness told Eyewitness News it may have started out with kids roughhousing at the pool and accidentally injuring someone connected to another group.
Investigators will need some time to sort it all out, said Anaheim Police Department Sgt. Shane Carringer.
"We'll be out here for a while," Carringer said. "It's going to take quite a bit of manpower to understand what happened. We still have several pockets of involved parties in the area that keep coming back and we have to address them with police personnel to keep them separated as we're ushering guests out of the hotel."
Carringer disputed a social media report which initially described the incident as an intentional stabbing at a protest.
"This was an isolated incident," he said. "It's not a single lone actor who came here to stab anybody. This was a brawl that broke out between 60 to 100 people."
