More than 1,000 teenagers swarmed into Orlando\u2019s popular Icon Park Saturday night for a \u201ctakeover\u201d of the tourist attraction and when fights broke out more than 50 deputies were deployed to break up the gathering.<\/p>\n
Two deputies were injured and hospitalized but have since been released, Orange County Sheriff John Mina said Monday.<\/p>\n
Mina said the teens descended upon Icon Park\u00a0 \u2014 home to the Orlando Eye Ferris wheel \u2014 around 7:30 p.m. Saturday, running \u201ccrazy\u201d throughout the area and starting several fights.<\/p>\n
Nine teens, ages 13 to 16 were arrested, some of them on charges of battery on a law enforcement officer and resisting law enforcement.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m sure a majority of the kids who went there didn\u2019t go there to cause problems, but a lot of them did,\u201d Mina said. \u201cSome of these are very, very serious crimes\u2026it comes with significant penalties and could, you know, ruin a young life.\u201d<\/p>\n
A manager at Helena Modern Riviera, a restaurant at Icon Park, said Monday that the teens stayed outside but that law enforcement\u2019s closure of several exits made it hard for guests to get in and made some late for their dinner.<\/p>\n
Mina said the \u201ctakeover\u201d had been advertised across social media and that the sheriff\u2019s office had prior knowledge of it, in part by monitoring social media. He said parents should monitor their children\u2019s social media as well to see if their kids are aware of such events\u00a0and warn them not to participate.<\/p>\n
He also said the sheriff\u2019s office is aware of another such event advertised on social media for May 9 at an unspecified location and issued a warning to anyone planning to attend.<\/p>\n
\u201cTo those people who might plan on going there, just know that we are going to have dozens and dozens of deputy sheriffs there,\u201d he said. \u201cWe will have transport vans ready to take you away in handcuffs if you break the law.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"More than 1,000 teenagers swarmed into Orlando\u2019s popular Icon Park Saturday night for a \u201ctakeover\u201d of the tourist…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":229621,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[112,28,114,266,115,1335,139,141,140,109],"class_list":["post-248933","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-orlando","tag-crime-and-public-safety","tag-florida","tag-latest-headlines","tag-local-news","tag-news","tag-orange-county","tag-orlando","tag-orlando-headlines","tag-orlando-news","tag-social"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/248933","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=248933"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/248933\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/229621"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=248933"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=248933"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=248933"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}