FAU Frat Fracas Captured On Cell Phone Video
DEERFIELD BEACH (CBSMiami) - Cell phone video showed a chaotic scene last Saturday night in Deerfield Beach when BSO responded to a noise complaint at a party in a warehouse at 805 SE 1st Way.
There were a couple hundred people there, many FAU students. Felix Regis was arrested that night. "I had 20 stitches and 5 staples here," said Regis as he pointed out scrapes, scabs and stitches. "And then I have road rash all over my body," he continued. He said he got banged up as he was cuffed by BSO.
Byron Knight was there. "Officers had him by his arms and his neck like this while the other four officers were kneeing him and punching him repeatedly in his face and in his stomach," said Knight.
That's when Regis said others at the party tried to stop it. "They were just hitting me in the crowd and people in crowd were yelling and hitting them in hopes to stop them from beating me," he said.
Kelvin Edmond was arrested too. He said deputies were aggressive, trying to get people to leave – pushing them toward a small door in the front of the warehouse, instead of letting them go out the back. "Since there was only one small door," Edmond said, "everybody couldn't fit through the front door, so I guess the officers were getting mad that everybody was taking long time to leave, so that's when they started rushing, they started running, like walking fast running and telling people to get the fu** out of here and shut the fu** up."
BSO said deputies used constraint. "I think that our deputies used extreme restraint and that they were confronted with nearly 200 folks, seven of our deputies were transported to the hospital to seek medical clearance, whereas only one individual of the six arrested received treatment for sustained injury," said BSO Lt. Eddit Rosende.
BSO said this all happened because they didn't get cooperation when they arrived and that the DJ tried to incite the crowd. "Once our folks were trying to gain control of the situation," Rosende said, "the party goers retreated back inside the warehouse and they slammed the garage door down, the DJ began saying "f" the police, "f" the police, "f" the police. So clearly this gentleman was trying to incite a response from the crowd."
According to the party organizer, the garage door was never purposely closed and he repeated said "the party's over." He claims he never said anything disparaging toward police.
As it stands right now, several of the people who were at the party have hired attorneys and are calling for an investigation of BSO.
Meanwhile, BSO said they're looking to see if they can identify other people who were involved with the trouble. If they find anyone, they said they'll arrest them.
