Police on Long Island say they've arrested nine students in a large off-campus brawl earlier this month in which baseball bats and brass knuckles were used to attack one another after a lunchroom dispute.
The melee broke out the afternoon of Saturday, March 7 in an industrial park in Ronkonkoma following a dispute at Connetquot High School in Bohemia, police and family members say.
Nine students were arrested, and four of them are being charged as juveniles, Suffolk police say. Those four are expected to appear at First District Court in Central Islip at a later date.
The five others, ranging in age from 16 to 18, face a variety of charges, some for criminal possession of a weapon, menacing, disorderly conduct and harassment.
A family member of one of the students involved told NBC 4 New York at the time that the fight was a manifestation of ongoing racial tensions between the students
Video obtained by NBC 4 New York shows several teens standing in a street arguing before the fight breaks out. One person, who is black, accuses a white person of calling him a racial epithet. Then, one of the participants can be seen pulling a metal bat out and handing it to another person.
Then, a person can be heard saying, "Take the brass knuckles off, bro" to the teen who initially had the bat. That person is then heard yelling expletives and, "I'm from Queens, New York!"
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The video shows a third teen run up and punch one of the other teens in the face. At that point, all the students begin brawling in the street.
The fight lasted about 10 minutes, police say.
Student Nicholas Abrahamson suffered a broken jaw and was taken to Stony Brook Hospital for surgery. No other students were seriously hurt.
Abrahamson was not one of the arrested students, police said.
The students involved in the fight had already been suspended from school pending a disciplinary review.
The school district has said it tried to intervene following the lunchroom dispute Friday, the day before the brawl, and contacted the students' parents.
"The intention was to make the parents aware of the school district’s concern that the verbal argument could grow into something more serious over the weekend outside of the school district’s jurisdiction," the school said in a statement.
In addition to increasing security measures following the fight and conducting random bag checks on students, the school district said it was setting up a task force to deal with harassment and set up a mediation system for feuding students.
