Police called as 20 schoolkids scrap in Highbury street
A file image of a Met police car. Picture: Steve Poston - Credit: Archant
Business owners waded in to try and break apart a 20-strong group of scrapping teenagers in Highbury last night.
Police were called to the street fight, which kicked off at 4.30pm when a group of schoolboys began fighting in Highbury Park.
By the time cops arrived, there were four separate groups of pupils fighting.
A business owner who didn’t want to be named said: “There were around 20 people at least, but everyone was taking part in the fight.
“Most of the kids were just looking, because they must have known about it and thought: ‘Let’s go and watch.’”
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He believes the fight had been organised earlier in the day.
At one point a girl was thrown onto the floor of a dry cleaner’s shop in front of the shocked owner, who had tried to bolt the door seconds earlier. “I wasn’t quick enough to lock the door,” he told the Gazette, “as a couple of teenagers pushed it and threw a girl on the floor.
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“It was so quick I couldn’t really do anything, apart from helping the girl up as she was a bit distraught.”
He hadn’t seen anything similar in Highbury Park before, he added, although he was robbed at gunpoint in the shop 24 years ago.
The dry cleaner added other business owners had stepped in to scold the youngsters before the police arrived.
“I don’t know how the mentality works these days,” he said, “but it looks like the guys that were fighting on the street just really wanted to fight. They were asking for it.”
A Scotland Yard spokesman said officers were called at 5.35pm but that “no offences were disclosed” as the pupils dispersed when they got there.
