Bizarre Brawl Breaks Out at Baggage Carousel, Erupts in Chaos at Airport
The incident involved nearly a dozen people.
A massive brawl broke out at an O'Hare International Airport baggage carousel, ending in a man and woman being charged with battery. The incident, which grew to involve nearly a dozen people, was caught on video at the Chicago airport's Terminal 3. Viral footage shows people rolling on the floor, pulling hair, and throwing punches. Read on to find out what happened after that.
The video shows about a dozen people involved in the fight. Two pairs of women can be seen rolling on the floor, pulling each other's hair, and landing punches. Two brawling men fall onto the luggage carousel, where one of the men is punched and kicked in the face, causing his hat to fly off. One woman attempts to hit another person with a shoe before a man punches her in the face, knocking her to the ground.
In the video, onlookers are heard shouting for security to intervene. Some shout at the brawlers to stop fighting, and others attempt to break things up. Others can be seen watching the melee from the sidelines.
ABC 7 Chicago reported that three people got into a verbal dispute while exiting a plane. The conflict escalated near the baggage claim at around 11:05 p.m., when a fight broke out among numerous people, resulting in a 24-year-old woman being punched by two other individuals.
Chicago Police said two people had been arrested and charged in connection with the incident. Christopher Hampton, 18, from Maywood, Illinois, and Tembra Hicks, 20, from Carol Stream, Illinois, have both been charged with battery. It's unclear exactly what triggered the violence. O'Hare officials had not released which flight the group had been traveling on before the fight broke out.
In a statement, Chicago police said: "A verbal dispute while deplaning escalated in the lower level of terminal 3 when a 24-year-old female victim was punched by two offenders. The offenders were placed into custody and charged accordingly." In their own statement, officials from O'Hare said: "Safety and security are always the top priorities of the Chicago Department of Aviation (CDA). We work closely with all of our federal partners present at O'Hare and Midway International Airports and the Chicago Police Department to ensure that everyone is safe when they are in our facilities."
They added: "The CDA also ensures that its airline partners have clear lines of communication to public safety resources for occurrences within their leased areas."
Last month, the aviation site View From the Wing posted a video reportedly taken at the Atlanta airport, at the gate for a Spirit Airlines flight to Miami. Two women are seen brawling and knocking each other to the ground, as two airline employees attempt to break up the fight and another exhorts the crowd to back up and says the police are on their way. "Don't make this worse than it already is," she says.
