Fight Among Students Leads To Another Involving Parents, Other Adults At George Washington High School
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- In Northeast Philadelphia, tensions between high school students ended in a fight that involved parents. Several students say fights are fairly common at George Washington High School but this one was different.
Not only did parents and adults get involved but one of them was seen reaching for what appeared to be an empty gun holster.
The campus is now quiet at George Washington High School in Northeast Philadelphia but that was not the case on Wednesday. The school district says a fight that started among students later escalated outside when a group of adults got involved.
"Now seeing it for the first time, it was scary. I didn't know which exit to go through," a student said.
After the first fight, the district says some parents came to the school to discuss a mediation plan. But one parent had no intention of playing peacemaker.
Instead, the district says, that parent waited with a group of unrelated adults outside the school before attacking a group of students believed to be involved in the earlier fight.
"It makes me feel like the parents are not really helping at all. They're supposed to be the ones to calm everything down, but instead, they're making the situation worse," a student said.
Students say the scariest part is one of those adults was seen reaching for what appeared to be an empty holster, which is not allowed on school property.
"Unsafe. Unsafe. Like that could make other people feel unsafe if you have a gun. They might not even know if it's loaded or not or anything. It's just you feel unsafe when you hear about that or whatever," a student said
The school district says no weapons were ever confirmed to be on campus but they expect better behavior from adults.
"We encourage our parents to be models for their children and for all students. Conflict resolution should always be dealt with in ways that don't include violence. And so, we stress that with our students and we hope their parents will do that with them when they're home," School District of Philadelphia spokesperson Monica Lewis said.
Philadelphia police confirm they did respond to the fight Wednesday. They say no one was arrested because no students or parents wanted to press charges.
CBS3's Ross DiMattei reports.
