4 adults, 10 youths charged in Center City disturbance

A fight between two teenage girls Tuesday afternoon in Center City drew a large crowd of young people in the area of 15th and Chestnut Streets, said parents of some of the teens arrested at the scene.

It was not a planned "flash mob," and the crowd had not gathered for any particular purpose, the parents said Wednesday.

"My son wasn't out there fighting," Dwayne Louis, 39, said outside the Youth Study Center, where 10 juveniles were awaiting hearings Wednesday.

Whatever happened, police arrested 14 people - including Louis' son - amid rumors of a flash mob. The Wendy's restaurant at 15th and Chestnut locked its doors during the mayhem. But authorities insisted it was not a repeat of the teen rampages of years past.

District Attorney Seth Williams' office said the juveniles were charged with conspiracy, obstructing highways, failure to disperse, and disorderly conduct.

Four 18-year-olds - Mitchell Symeir, Tymere Wilder, Rashaun Green, and Kenyatta Long - were charged as adults with the same offenses.

A source familiar with the investigation said those arrested - three females and 11 males - attend various public and parochial schools.

Those schools include the Academy at Palumbo, Overbrook High School, Randolph High School, and Simon Gratz Mastery Charter School in the city, as well as the Archdiocese of Philadelphia's Bishop McDevitt, Roman Catholic, and J.W. Hallahan High Schools, the source said.

Louis, 39, said he had gone with his 16-year-old son, Shaquan, to register for one of the city's Camelot alternative high schools. Afterward, they spent time at the father's West Philadelphia barbershop.

Then Shaquan Louis went to Center City, with plans to attend an after-school program that evening, said his father.

Instead, he was arrested.

"I just don't understand," Dwayne Louis said. "It was a mass of people, 500-plus people. You can't disperse so fast. . . . That's why they were locked up: They weren't moving fast enough."

Shaka M. Johnson, a lawyer representing a boy and a girl who were arrested, said, "It seems some young men and some young women were obviously detained in error."

Johnson said his clients were released on in-home detention, which means they can go only to school, until a hearing set for April 25. Johnson said his clients had permission to participate in after-school activities on the condition that their parents supervise them.

A woman and her daughter walked out of the Youth Study Center about 3 p.m. Wednesday, almost 24 hours after the incident.

The mother declined to give her name but said her daughter was one of the people arrested.

"Pretty soon we'll be cleared of wrongdoing," she said.

Tuesday afternoon, police commanders in Center City were monitoring their radios when bike officers began reporting large crowds of teens - and then fighting - in the area around 15th and Chestnut, said Capt. Frank Banford, commanding officer of the Ninth District, which covers the west half of Center City.

Within minutes, swarms of police - and commanders from all the Center City policing units - were at the scene on car, bike, and foot, Banford said.

Two girls were arrested for fighting, said Chief Inspector Cynthia Dorsey.

"We don't know at this point if they were here to watch a fight or a fight spontaneously broke out," said Dorsey, a city officer assigned to the Philadelphia School District's Office of School Safety.

Bottles were thrown at police, but no one was hurt, Dorsey said.

District spokesman Fernando Gallard said that any disciplinary actions by the district would depend on whether the incidents occurred as the students were on their way home from school or later.

The district's code of conduct applies only when students are in school or going to and from school, Gallard said.