Police are investigating a violent altercation involving multiple people in downtown Cincinnati on Saturday night after video of the brawl went viral on social media.
Police Chief Teresa Theetge said that the incident “was a sudden dispute between individuals following a verbal altercation” and that it was not connected to the Cincinnati Music Festival, which was happening at the same time.
Theetge said she is “in complete disgust waking up to the viral video” of the incident circulating online.
“The behavior displayed is nothing short of cruel and absolutely unacceptable,” she said in a statement Sunday. “Our investigative team is working diligently to identify every individual involved in causing harm.”
Five people face charges, Theetge told reporters Monday. She declined to identify the suspects or provide more details about their alleged crimes.
Those records remain sealed, she said, and some of those who have been charged have not been located.
Theetge said she expects more charges. Alcohol was likely to have played a "significant part" in an altercation, which authorities received only one 911 call about, she said.
"For us to have 100 or so people down there, involved in or watching this event, recording with their cellphones, and for us to get only one phone call of this incident is unacceptable," she said.
Videos circulating online show a chaotic scene involving at least a dozen people. In one video, a few men can be seen standing face-to-face, having what appears to be a verbal altercation, before one man seems to hit another in the face. That seems to set off a full-blown physical altercation, in which the man who threw the first hit is beaten by multiple people in the middle of a street. The violence includes kicks and stomps to his face.
The crowd also appears to attack two other men who appear to know the man being beaten. In another video, a woman trying to defend him gets knocked unconscious by someone in the crowd. Blood can be seen running from her mouth as she lies on the ground.
It is not clear what happened before the videos were recorded.
The incident got much attention on social media over the weekend, particularly on Elon Musk’s X, where many high-profile right-wing accounts, such as LibsofTikTok and End Wokeness, framed the fight as an assault by a Black “mob” on a white couple.
Musk himself published posts decrying the fight and calling for mainstream media attention. He did not mention race in his post.
Prominent Republican politicians also weighed in, with Vice President JD Vance answering a question Monday about the fight, saying he saw a “mob of lawless thugs beating up on an innocent person.”
Vance's half-brother, Cory Bowman, is running for mayor of Cincinnati and will face the incumbent, Aftab Pureval, in November.
Pureval said he was outraged by the fight, calling it “horrifying to watch” and “intolerable” in any part of the city. He said he is confident that arrests are “forthcoming.”
“That’s not who we are as a city,” Pureval said in a statement Monday. “Since the fight occurred, I have been in consistent communication with Chief Theetge, and our police have been working around the clock to investigate and bring perpetrators of violence to justice.”
Pureval reiterated that the altercation was not connected to the Cincinnati Music Festival, Cincinnati Reds games, the Big3 basketball tournament “or any of the large events that took place over the weekend.”
