Police respond to MLHS gang fight on Thursday

MOSES LAKE — Officers with both the Moses Lake Police Department and the Grant County Sheriff’s Office responded to a large fight in the parking lot of Moses Lake High School on Thursday involving a number of students, according to MLPD Capt. Dave Sands.

“There were kids around it egging it on, and all parties appeared to be gang-affiliated,” Sands said. “There were no weapons, no guns and no knives.”

Sands said police were on the scene around 11 a.m. not long after the fight broke out, and officers detained a number of students at the scene, including handcuffing them, in order to regain control. However, while officers did remove some of the students involved in the fight from the scene, no students were arrested and booked, Sands added.

“Everyone was released to the parents or guardians,” he said.

Sands said eight or nine MLPD officers responded to the fight, and the GCSO helped transport some of the students off campus.

MLHS Principal Sheila Kries said high school fights are a fairly frequent occurrence, Thursday’s fight was very atypical because it was so large and so many students were involved.

“The number involved made it unusual, and that’s not a common event,” Kries said. “Fighting is not uncommon, but the size made it a little more difficult to manage.”

“It doesn’t happen often,” Sands added. “We’ve seen it before, but it’s not normal.”

Kries said police responded quickly once the fight was reported, and MLHS was briefly locked down to ensure more trouble did not break out. Normally, MLHS has a school resource officer on-site, but additional officers also remained on campus for the rest of Thursday and all of Friday, she said.

“It was pretty uneventful for the rest of the day,” Kries said of Thursday.

Charles H. Featherstone can be reached at cfeatherstone@columbiabasinherald.com.