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Breaking stories
Street fight - Hundreds watched girls brawl (UPDATE)
YouTube has deleted footage showing two teenage girls fighting in a vicious brawl in Cork last Friday.
By Eoin EnglishIrish Examiner Reporter
As reported in today's Irish Examiner one girl had teeth knocked out in the pre-arranged fight in Ballyvolane.
The girls' names and the time of the fight was posted on Twitter hours beforehand and a crowd of around 200 teenagers turned up to watch.
The disturbing footage which has now been removed showed the crowd chanting as the girls grabbed each other by the hair, kicked and punched each other.
A teenage girl had teeth knocked out in a vicious pre-arranged brawl which was recorded and uploaded to YouTube.
ORIGINAL STORY
A teenage girl had teeth knocked out in a vicious pre-arranged brawl which was recorded and uploaded to YouTube.
A crowd of up to 200 teenage onlookers, including children under the age of 10, prevented adults from intervening.
The fight took place on waste ground behind Kinvara Estate in Ballyvolane, on the northside of Cork City just after 5pm last Friday.
The girls’ names and the time of their fight were posted on Twitter just hours before, along with details of a second fight between two named boys, due to take place half an hour later.
Residents overlooking the area yesterday spoke of their terror.
They said they became concerned around 5pm when a crowd of about 200 teenagers suddenly arrived in the area “out of nowhere”.
“People began sending texts to neighbours saying ‘get your kids off the streets — there’s going to be a fight’,” said one woman, who refused to be named.
The fight was recorded on mobile phones and two clips — one 17 seconds long and the other just over a minute long — were uploaded to YouTube.
Such content is contrary to YouTube’s terms and conditions, and the films were deleted yesterday afternoon.
The disturbing footage shows the two girls grabbing each other by the hair, dragging each other to the ground, and beating each other repeatedly about the head and face. It also shows one girl kicking the other while she is on the ground.
They are surrounded by a large crowd of onlookers who urge the girls to “bite” and “bate” each other.
Some onlookers try to kick one of the girls while she is pinned to the ground.
One of the clips shows an adult outside the ring of onlookers trying to break up the fight.
Sinn Féin education spokesman Jonathan O’Brien, a TD for the area, said he was “shocked and appalled” by the footage.
“It was pre-arranged and it was vicious,” said Mr O’Brien. “It is one of the worst things of this kind that I’ve seen on YouTube. I don’t know how one of them wasn’t seriously injured.
“You can throw out all the political clichés you want about education and respect, but this goes beyond that — it’s a breakdown in society.”
He said YouTube had a responsibility to prevent such footage, particularly featuring children, being uploaded to its site.
“This is not about curtailing free speech. There is nothing that this video does for promoting free speech,” he said.
“It can foster copycat incidents and increase peer pressure on teenagers to settle arguments in this way.
“Once it goes up on YouTube, it’s up there forever.
“I don’t think teenagers today realise that a stupid mistake like that can haunt them for the rest of their lives.”
It is the second such fight in Cork City to be uploaded to the internet in recent months.
Last October, a three-minute clip of two teenage girls fighting in a park in the Douglas area was also uploaded to YouTube.
It was viewed up to 30,000 times before it was removed.
The October fight took place outside school hours but some of the onlookers were identified by the school uniforms they were wearing. It led to the suspension of three pupils of Christ King secondary school, and the imposition of two weeks’ detention on another student.
The school described the fight as “appalling and unacceptable” and said while staff could not control the actions of pupils outside school hours, they would discipline anybody who had brought the school into disrepute.
The National Parents’ Council subsequently praised the school for its swift action in dealing with this incident.
Community gardaí also visited the school and spoke to pupils afterwards about the incident.