Gardaí investigate reports of fight involving up to 60 youths in Cork

Gardaí are investigating reports that dozens of teenagers met for a prearranged fight in Co Cork on Saturday night in breach of the Covid-19 regulations.

Videos posted on social media show up to 60 people – all believed to be minors – fighting in groups in a wooded area near Mount Oval Village in Rochestown.

Gardaí are understood to be investigating if the fight was prearranged between pupils attending a Cork city school and a group from east Cork who travelled for the confrontation.

No injuries were reported but it is understood the event is the latest in a series of incidents of anti-social behaviour in the Mount Oval area, which have led to serious concerns among local residents.

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Cllr Mary Rose Desmond, of Fianna Fáil, urged anyone who witnessed the incident or has any information about it to contact gardaí.

She told Cork’s 96FM she did not expect to see “that level of violence” and that it was “very worrying” to see an “orchestrated gathering with numerous assaults taking place”.

The incident is the second such confrontation to take place in Cork in a fortnight, following a fight, also captured on social media, involving up to 14 teenagers in Ballincollig on May 14th.

That incident saw a fight break out between a group of local Ballincollig teenagers and a group of teenagers from Gurranabraher on Cork's northside near East Gate in the centre of Ballincollig on the afternoon of May 14th.

Footage of the Ballincollig fight showed some teenagers hitting others with bars, after which no injuries were reported. Gardaí began an investigation into the matter and have identified all the parties involved from footage posted online.

Drinking party

Meanwhile, a teenager faces losing part of his finger after it got caught as he jumped from a railing while fleeing the scene of a drinking party at Ballynoe Hill in Cobh.

The youth was one of about 30 teenagers who were drinking near a wooded area at about 8pm in breach of Covid-19 regulations but who dispersed a number of times when gardaí arrived at the scene.

It is understood that gardaí arrested one of the teenagers involved in the party and seized what they suspect was a quantity of cocaine from him before learning of the incident involving the teenager who injured his finger.

Gardaí are understood to have alerted the emergency services and the youth was taken to Cork University Hospital to undergo emergency surgery to try and save his finger.