Another shows police officers racing down a street towards what appears to be a fight breaking out later on in the day.
Advertisement
Approximately 200 people, believed to have been in their late teens, were thought to have been involved in the mass fight in the East London town of Walthamstow at around 5pm, according to police.
Footage posted online under the hashtag #Walthamstowriots showed large groups of teenagers shouting and beating each other as Metropolitan police officers tried to restrain them.
– Old Holborn (@Holbornlolz) October 6, 2015Pieces of weave strewn across Hoe Street.
As a police launched an investigation into the cause of the incident, local residents speculated on Twitter that the fight involved pupils from Sir George Monoux College and Leyton Sixth Form College.
“At the time of the police arrival, the group were not committing offences but their presence in such numbers would be alarming to members of the public as would the volume of police vehicles”. I heard it was started by two girls fighting over one boy. “They were fighting and punching each other”, recalled Nilufer Polat, 36, a server in restaurant on the same street.
“There was a mix of kids – all ethnicities – and they weren’t all being aggressive”. “We were scared, we were anxious about the business and them coming into the shop”.
“So many people came together and started fighting”, said Sangeetha Ratnan, who was working in Foster’s Supermarket when the fight broke out. It was very bad.
Another local shopkeeper, who declined to be named, said: “A lot of kids were fighting in the street, we had to close the shop. They blocked the road for three and a half hours and we had no customers”.
MP for Walthamstow Stella Creasy said she was “furious” and called the “completely unacceptable”.
Many have taken to Twitter to share pictures and videos of the brawl.
Girls were seen tearing at one another’s hair while several fought using poles in the centre of Walthamstow, east London.
Advertisement
It seems to be a rather hectic week for the London police.
