Eight arrested after teens’ beach brawl

A high school student has told of horror scenes in a mass brawl at Auckland’s Mission Bay on Friday.

As many as 100 students from several Auckland schools descended on the east Auckland beachfront about 3pm for a fight apparently organised through Instagram.

It was said to be one of many upcoming brawls involving students of schools in the “dirty south” and “west Auckland”.

A student who was there said it was meant to be a gathering of teens from various schools to celebrate the end of the school year — but some used it to organise the brawl.

As students started arriving from midday an “atmosphere of violence” began to grow.

“There was a vast amount of students gathering and we heard swearing and people running,” the student said.

“And among all this chaos were repeated gang and school gestures.”

The fights began around 3pm after a beer bottle was crushed on one student’s head.

The student phoned 111 as “multiple fights” broke out all around them.

One student was grabbed by a group from one school, and punched to the sand, before being kicked while they lay on the ground.

“The amount of kicks to the head, made us think that he was dead because of the way he was laying

The amount of kicks to the head, made us think that he was dead.

lifeless there, with blood all over his face.”

Witnesses reported about 40 police officers descended on the scene around 3.30pm.

Eight youths were arrested, one for assault. One person was taken to hospital with minor injuries. They were all released without charge and would be dealt with by Youth Aid.

Builder Francis Mann was working on a site near Mission Bay on Friday and confronted the group when he and his colleagues popped down to the beach for a lunchtime dip.

“There was probably 50 or 60 of them walking around with Vodka Cruisers, open bottles, clearly drunk and being very intimidating. They were so brazen in public, no care for any kind of repercussions.”

Mann said there was a similar incident a few weeks ago, and he’d heard students were planning round three with messages circulating through Instagram.

The exact schools the students involved in the brawl were from have not been identified, but witnesses said there was one group representing south Auckland and another west Auckland.