Parents Fight At Elementary School Lunch: Come Get Your Cousins...

CLEVELAND — A brawl that started over spilled punch at a kindergarten graduation ceremony Friday resulted in the arrest of eight people, authorities said. Police were called when one participant pulled out a pipe and another a hammer.

Two teenage girls apparently started hitting each other at Michael R. White Elementary School, and their families joined in, Cleveland police Cmdr. Wayne Drummond said. The fight involved adults and minors, he said.

“You had adults fighting adults, juvies fighting juvies, and so forth,” he said as parents streamed into the building to pick up their children. “You just had a melee here.”

No one was hurt, Drummond said. It wasn’t clear whether the hammer and pipe were brought to the school or were grabbed during the fight from a janitor’s supplies or elsewhere, police spokeswoman Detective Jennifer Ciaccia said.

No charges were immediately filed, but those arrested were being booked for aggravated rioting, Drummond said. By city practice, charges are filed after prosecutors review a case.

A parent of students at the school, Brianna Smith, was alerted by a neighbor about the fight and went to the school to get her 7- and 12-year-old sons. “It makes me not want to send them for the rest of the school year,” she told The (Cleveland) Plain Dealer.