Five charged in viral Cincinnati street attack but prosecutor's office awaits details

Fox News

3 days ago

The top prosecutor in Hamilton County, Ohio, Connie Pillich, said despite claims from Cincinnati Chief of Police Teresa Theetge, that five people have been charged in connection to an attack over the weekend, those charges have not yet been filed with the court.
In an interview with Fox News Digital, Pillich said to her knowledge, five people were charged, though her office has yet to receive any word on what the charges are.
The charges stem from a beating that took place on Friday night between Elm and Fourth Streets, that resulted in videos of the incident going viral on social media.
Video circulating around social media shows two people attacking a man wearing a white T-shirt, who is eventually shoved to the ground. The man wearing a white T-shirt was kicked several times while he was on the ground but eventually gets up.
A woman was also seen lying unconscious in the street after being punched. Several people can be seen helping her get up, and she eventually regained consciousness.
"What I saw in that video was very, very troubling to me," Pillich told Fox News Digital. "Just people fighting, using violence to solve some, probably, some minor disagreement. And that's just not acceptable behavior."
Even more concerning to the prosecutor was that the incident took place in a part of Cincinnati that she said has very little crime.
"It was just a perfect storm of people being out, being out late, probably drinking, having some sort of disagreement that exploded into a fistfight," Pillich said. "That can happen with alcohol, and as you can see…some of them were dressed up very nicely, and they were just out on the town."
Pillich explained that incidents like that from over the weekend do not happen all the time.
When the assault took place, several events were taking place in Cincinnati, including a music festival, a basketball tournament at the Heritage Bank Center arena, and a Cincinnati Reds baseball game.
"There was a lot going on down here and all of it was safe," Pillich said. "When you get a bunch of people [together] sometimes people disagree – people might disagree with you when you're driving down the highway.
"So, we're just seeing that kind of temperature being stoked a little bit, probably through, in my mind, through social media, through gossip transmitted across social media," she added. "So, we need to step that down a little bit."
During a press conference on Monday, Theetge slammed social media for not showing the full story of what happened that led to what some have claimed to be a Black on White crime in Cincinnati. The chief also took issue with the media's coverage of the incident.
Theetge said during the presser that over 100 people were watching and filming the attack, though only one person called 911 to alert police to the incident. When officers arrived, the attack had come to an end, she said.
"The idea that nobody called 911…I think is part of the culture that we're in right now where we want to record everything, and I don't know what people do with those recordings," Pillich said. "But calling 911 has got to be what we do first. 911's been around for decades, way earlier than this century was arriving here. People should know 911, and perhaps this is a very good reminder to everyone that we should all call 911 if we see something."
And despite the police chief saying many people were watching and recording the attack, Pillich said she saw another side not mentioned.
"I can tell you when I looked at a couple of the videos, I saw people yelling, 'Stop! Stop!'" she said. "I saw [people] pulling people out of the melee. I saw a small amount of people trying to help, and I'm really glad about those good people who understand that we're better than this."