Kennywood Park Shuts Down Early With Fights On Opening Day

Pacquiao vs Mayweather wasn’t the only fight Saturday night. Kennywood was having a great opening day, until teens decided to be disruptive. The park shut down 1 hr early after a fight broke out inside park around 8:45pm.

Local Pittsburgh news stations reported that a fight started in the parks Kiddie Land area around 8:45 p.m. Once the teens were kicked out of the park, the fight continued at a McDonald’s across the street.

Courtney Fischer reported that hundreds of people poured out of the park and into the McDonald’s parking lot. There was heavy police presence on site at the restaurant. She says it was “very chaotic in beginning, but crowd calmed shortly after. Rumors of shots fired are NOT true”.

The scene had died down by 10:30pm. According to police, several witnesses reported seeing up to 100-people fighting on social media, but officials say it doesn’t appear that was the case.

Kennywood spokesman Nick Paradise said:

“The term “riot” was a great exaggeration”. “Around dusk, we saw several large groups of teenagers running through the park, scuffling, pushing and shoving”.

Kennywood security officers confirmed four teenage girls were injured, although they were all only minor injuries.

According to Kennywood officials, the park asked for crowd control assistance from police departments in neighboring communities during the event because a large group of teenagers became “disruptive and created an uncomfortable situation for other patrons of the park”. As many as 50 police officers responded to the call from 10 different departments including West Mifflin, Duquesne, and Allegheny County.

A statement from kennywood said.

“The first and foremost priority of Kennywood is providing a safe and family-friendly atmosphere for our guests”

Witnesses outside the park said the news reports were all blown way out of proportion, saying that there was simply a cat fight among a few young girls that had hundreds of park guests gather to “see what was going on”. We all know how the news teams tend to jump the gun and report on these things for attention… especially at an amusement park.

The park will reopen to guests as scheduled on May 9th.

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