Couple injured in midnight street fight, woman taken to hospital
A street fight Saturday resulted in minor injuries to a Paso Robles woman. Photo from Facebook.
Police say liquor, cat-calling, and slurs escalated incident
– A night of bar-hopping ended in a physical fight on 12th street in Paso Robles Saturday night just minutes after midnight.
Accounts of the incident vary, but police say they have made no arrests and that the case sits with the district attorney’s office where it will be reviewed and a decision made regarding whether arrests are necessary.
The altercation involved six people, a Paso Robles couple, a male friend of theirs and three other men. Since no one has been charged, names have not been released to the public.
Paso Robles Police Lt. Ty Lewis said no arrests were made because both parties appear to have escalated the situation.
“A male and female had been in some of the local bars and got into a verbal altercation with three other people,” Lewis said. “There may have been some cat-calling toward the female, which offended her husband.”
The husband reportedly confronted the men making comments about his wife, two of whom were of Hispanic descent. Racial slurs were reportedly heard during the confrontation.
“Derogatory racial remarks provoked a fight,” Lewis said. “[The wife] intervened and was said to have been punched. Officers were able to observe a scratch to the eye and ear area.”
The woman involved posted on her Facebook page that she and her husband were “attacked by a group of Mexicans … Saturday night. I was taken away by ambulance with a cracked cheekbone and other injuries. [My husband] had a major concussion.”
Lewis said the cat-calls were possibly inappropriate but that directing racial slurs at a person is a defense in the legal system.
“To characterize it as an attack isn’t really accurate,” Lewis said. “When there’s liquor involved and someone says something inappropriate, how you respond decides how the rest of your night goes.”
According to Lewis, there were many witnesses who were interviewed by officers at the scene, some involved in the altercation and others who witnessed the escalation but were not directly involved.
“What we did was we took statements from everybody involved,” Lewis said. “We found independent witnesses who saw different parts of the altercation. Based on the convoluted mess that was on scene that night, they decided not to make arrests. There were a lot of people around and they heard the racial epithets. We believe alcohol was a catalyst, and there were definitely some people who got punched or injured.”
The woman in the case agreed to a short interview to describe what happened from her point of view.
“Basically, we were walking from Pine Street to go to [another bar], and there was a group of Mexican dudes standing there saying things to me like, ‘Hey, you need to come home with me,’” she said. “My husband got pissed, turned around to tell them to stop, and one of them spit on him, so they all started fighting.”
She said her husband and a male friend with them were in the fight with the three other men. When asked if anyone was saying racial slurs, she said they were.
“I’m not saying it’s right, but that’s what happened,” she said. “We weren’t out looking for trouble. It’s sad. They had my husband on the ground and were kicking him in the head. I was begging him to leave us alone; That’s the last thing I remember then got knocked out. I have a cracked cheekbone. When I woke up, the other guys had already fled.”
She said she was taken to Twin Cities by ambulance where she received stitches in her face, and her husband followed in a private vehicle. They were both treated and released.
Lewis said it could take a few weeks for the district attorney’s office to make a decision on the case.
