Police are investigating a violent altercation involving multiple people that happened in downtown Cincinnati on Saturday night after video of the brawl went viral on social media.
According to police Chief Teresa Theetge, the incident “was a sudden dispute between individuals following a verbal altercation,” and was not connected to the Cincinnati Music Festival that was happening at the same time.
Theetge said she is “in complete disgust waking up to the viral video” of the incident circulating online.
“The behavior displayed is nothing short of cruel and absolutely unacceptable,” she said in a statement on Sunday. “Our investigative team is working diligently to identify every individual involved in causing harm.”
Police did not share any information about the altercation, what caused it, or how many people were involved. They did not clarify if there had been any arrests as of Monday afternoon.
Theetge is asking anyone with information on the incident to contact police.
Videos circulating online show a chaotic scene involving at least a dozen people. In one video, a few men can be seen standing face-to-face, having what appears to be a verbal altercation, before one man seems to hit another in the face. This seems to set off a full-blown physical altercation, where the man who threw the first hit is beaten by multiple people in the middle of a street. The violence includes kicks and stomps to his face.
Two other men who appear to know the man being beaten also appear to be attacked by the crowd. In another video, a woman attempting to defend him gets knocked unconscious by someone in the crowd. Blood could be seen running from her mouth as she lay on the ground.
It is not clear what happened before these videos were taken.
The incident has garnered much attention on social media over the weekend, particularly on Elon Musk’s X, where many high-profile rightwing accounts such as “LibsofTikTok” and “End Wokeness” framed the fight as an assault by a Black “mob” on a white couple.
Musk himself published posts decrying the fight and calling for mainstream media attention. He did not mention race in his post.
Prominent Republican politicians also weighed in, with Vice President JD Vance answering a question Monday about the fight, saying he saw a “mob of lawless thugs beating up on an innocent person.”
Vance’s half brother Cory Bowman is running for mayor of Cincinnati and will face the incumbent, Aftab Pureval, in a November election.
Pureval said he was outraged by the fight, calling it “horrifying to watch,” and “intolerable” in any part of the city. The mayor said he is confident that arrests are “forthcoming.”
“That’s not who we are as a city,” Pureval said in a statement on Monday. “Since the fight occurred, I have been in consistent communication with Chief Theetge, and our police have been working around the clock to investigate and bring perpetrators of violence to justice.”
Pureval reiterated that the altercation was not connected to the Cincinnati Music Festival, Cincinnati Reds games, the Big3 tournament, “or any of the large events that took place over the weekend.”
Janhvi Bhojwani , Jason Abbruzzese and Karen Cortes contributed.
