Three Arrested for Fighting in Storke Placita

Three people were arrested in Storke Placita Thursday night during a drunken scuffle with each other and police officers. At around 7:50 p.m., according to a police spokesperson, a passerby called to report six men and a woman fighting in the area. As officers arrived and tried to assess the situation, one of the fight’s participants — 20-year-old Andrew Holmberg — confronted the officers, cursing at them and puffing his chest.

Holmberg appeared intoxicated, said the spokesperson, and wouldn’t follow officers’ orders to keep his distance. The police were unable to interview the people in the plaza, and they went to arrest Holmberg for interfering with the investigation. As they did so, Holmberg’s girlfriend — 19-year-old Melissa Kane, who was also involved in the earlier fight — reportedly started yelling at officers and filming the arrest with her camera-phone. She also wouldn’t maintain a safe distance from the officers and was arrested because “her refusal to move back and heightened emotional state made her actions unpredictable and a danger,” the spokesperson said in a prepared statement.

The commotion drew a crowd of around 100 people. Both suspects were eventually placed in custody without the use of any weapons, and no one by the end required medical attention, the spokesperson said. Part of the arrest was captured by Kane’s camera-phone, which was retained as evidence. A third person involved in the earlier fight — David Schrader, 29 — was arrested for parole violation. Some witnesses said that the suspects had been fighting among themselves and harassing passersby for hours.