I am on hold with 911 when the second guy gets punched out.
It’s Sunday evening. My neighbors and I are on the patio of Havana’s nightclub when a fight breaks out on the sidewalk in front of us.
The chaos starts when several guys stumble out of Italia Express (a pizza place next to the bar). A heavyset guy in a purple shirt is screaming at a thinner man. Their friends are trying to hold the purple-shirted-man back when he shoves the skinny guy.
The skinny guy whacks his head on the pavement and then passes out with his hand hanging in the flooded street gutter.
Half the people on the Havana’s patio whip out their cellphones to call 911. Everyone gets a busy signal.
I run inside and ask the bar staff to call the police.
A tall bar patron (who didn’t see the initial fight) notices the unconscious man on the sidewalk. The tall guy runs to pull the unconscious man from the gutter when purple shirt punches him in the face.
There’s screaming. Everyone’s on hold with 911. The skinny guy is still unconscious in the gutter.
Eventually, the purple-shirted guy (who is blackout drunk) finally realizes that he may have seriously injured or killed somebody, so he takes off with his friends.
I follow them while on hold with 911 until they dart into the dark alleyway behind the bar. (I’ve been working out, but I am not prepared for some Jackie Chan action in an alleyway.)
Expectation:
Reality:
As I follow the assailant, apparently the unconscious man wakes up and his remaining friends drag him to a car parked in front of Hunky’s Burgers.
Meanwhile, everyone is still on hold with 911.
Two bored-looking cops show up about 30 minutes later. They were completely uninterested in finding the assailant or the man who was knocked out.
The cops leave, and my neighbors and I agree that if anyone else gets injured on The Strip, it’s more efficient for someone to run to the fire station down the street than sit on hold with 911.
Maybe we should invest in mace?
(Coincidentally, this is not the first time we’ve seen someone collapse and lose consciousness on Cedar Springs.)
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