Fight at Campus Pointe parking lot may have involved 40 people
A fight involving about 40 people broke out Saturday in the Campus Pointe parking lot, leaving the lot with broken glass, torn T-shirts and bloodstains, witnesses said.
Tyler Stankavich, a junior at the University of Akron, said the fight began around 1:50 a.m. when he placed a call to the Portage County Sheriff’s Department.
Several Campus Pointe residents said the fight involved people attending parties in buildings 1837 and the third floor of 1839. Exact apartment numbers could not be confirmed.
The sheriff’s department and Campus Pointe could not be reached for comment yesterday.
Campus Pointe is located across the street from Sheetz gas station.
Junior physical education majors Lauren Jasica and Rachel Lyons watched the fight from their apartment windows.
“I was lying in my bed,” Jasica said. “I heard this commotion and went to look outside and there were people just charging into the parking lot, just hitting each other.”
Stankavich, who was watching from his girlfriend’s apartment window, said he witnessed several people run into a parking lot, surround and attack someone.
“People were all around him, punching him until he fell on the ground,” Stankavich said. “Then they started kicking him.”
Stankavich, Jasica, Lyons and senior business management major Paul Lascko all said they witnessed the man get up and run into a car. His attackers followed him, two of them leaping onto the vehicle, and began punching and kicking at the windows, windshields and doors, they said.
“I saw one guy put his foot through the windshield and another put his foot through the back windshield,” Lascko said. Two other men standing on the sides of the car then smashed out the side windows, he said.
Stankavich said he then saw the man pulled from the car through the windshield and dragged to a section of grass, where the group continued to attack him.
Witnesses said despite the heavy attack on the man pulled from the car, most of the people outside were fighting with each other for several minutes.
“It was a zoo,” Lyons said. “Girls were dragging each other by the hair, people were punching each other and jumping on cars. The next day there was glass everywhere.”
Senior public relations major Nicole Nisson and senior international relations major Emily Grein said both of their cars received damage after people kicked and jumped onto them. Both were parked on either side of the car that had its windshields kicked in.
“Police found blood on both of our cars,” Nisson said.
Nisson, Jasica and Stankavich each said they called 911 several times. Officers didn’t arrive on scene until several minutes after the fight began, they said.
Nisson and Jasica said they placed a second call to 911 after each heard people involved claim they had guns.
UPDATE: Campus Pointe to hold meeting in response to weekend brawl
Contact Ashley Sepanski at [email protected].